As you walked the narrow but picturesque streets of Cadiz, and look up to the balconies with beautiful flowers and an amazingly blue sky, you would never imagine that there is a whole sub world of bones, war artifacts, and escape routes under the city. The existence of this sub world has been known for centuries of course, and yet as the city “modernizes” its buildings or builds new ones, more and more structures are discovered underground. Abbey Road Cadiz students took a trip to thousands of years back, and visited some of these structures.
The beauty: Cadiz has the second longest Roman aqueduct in the world, 83 KM. Balbus the Elder, born in Cadiz, ordered an aqueduct to be built to supply water to the Neapoli or new city that was built in the 1st century B.C. Our students started their journey at “La casa del pirata”, a 3 story hacienda with a huge underground well (Aljibe) as this was the only way for mainly well to do families to have water. Then they proceeded to el beatario (Beatus). The University of Cadiz is making a tremendous effort on uncovering and preserving these architectural findings. The beast: “La casa del pirata” has many ghost stories. It is said that the man who owned that house was originally very poor and sailed out to make money to be able to marry the woman he loved. Unknown to his lover was that he became a pirate to make the money. His lady built this hacienda with ocean like elements that resemble waves and birds to please her husband. It is said that when she died, he buried her in gold in that hacienda and her spirit roams the house. Of course, nobody has been able to find the gold. In the beatario there are many little niches that held the bodies of the beati who resided there. When the students went down to one of the secret rooms, they realized that they were leaning against what used to hold human remains. This really scared them. Also in the beatario, people used to hide from the “Pacos” (the snipers of the civil war), and several war artifacts, like the grenade shown in the picture by one of our students, have been found while excavating.
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