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Aerial view of the Torreparedones archaeological park hilltop between Baena and Castro del Río, exposed Iberian and Roman stone walls layered across the plateau, torreparedones cordoba

Torreparedones Has Been Open 15 Years, and a Tenth Is Dug Up

Torreparedones, on a hilltop between Baena and Castro del Río, has been open to visitors since 2011. Only about a tenth of its 3,500-year city has been dug.

Portrait of Sophie Marchand
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Art history background with eight years writing interpretive content on Córdoba's Caliphal heritage.

Published
Prehistoric & Iberianbefore 206 BCE
Torreparedones has been lived on for roughly 3,500 years[1], from Copper Age herders to a medieval Christian garrison, all on one hilltop in Córdoba's countryside, between Baena and Castro del Río. The archaeological park has welcomed visitors since 2011[2], yet as of the last published survey only about a tenth of its walled city had been dug up[3]. What sits under the other ninety percent is still, quite literally, an open question.
Prehistoric & Iberianbefore 206 BCE
Continuous habitation
3,500 years
Copper Age to the late Middle Ages[1]
Excavated as of 2021
10%
Of the 10.5-hectare walled interior[3]
Amphitheatre diameter
64-67 m
Pseudo-circular, in use 1st to 2nd c. AD[4]

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A hilltop that never emptied out

Cross the A-3125 between Baena and Cañete de las Torres and, near kilometre seventeen, a dirt track turns north off the tarmac and climbs to a plateau at 579.60 metres[5], the highest point in the whole Campiña cordobesa. Whoever settled here first chose the view on purpose.
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Iberians raised a walled town on that plateau around 600 BC, a fortification whose perimeter ran close to a kilometre and enclosed more than ten hectares[6]. Rome later absorbed the town, and, if the traditional identification holds, expanded it into a colony. Muslim and Christian rulers held the same hill in turn after that, right up to a Reconquista-era castle on the frontier with Nasrid Granada. Nobody demolished what came before them; they dug their foundations into it, and that habit is the reason this hilltop still has something new to find.

The goddess with no face, and the sanctuary looters found first

Outside the walls, Iberians built a sanctuary to Caelestis, a goddess whose cult image had no human features at all. Worshippers venerated a betyl, a stone column topped with a leaf-carved capital, rather than a statue[7]. The sanctuary operated from the 3rd century BC into the 2nd century AD, and archaeologists have recovered more than 350 stone ex-votos there, mostly figures of pregnant women or simply legs, left by people seeking safe childbirth[8].
A second sanctuary, roughly 500 metres from the first, only came to light because someone tried to loot it. In September 2020, an emergency dig prompted by illegal digging on the hillside turned up a shrine with seven zoomorphic ex-votos shaped like horses, along with several nearby burials[9]. Archaeologists had walked this ground for years without finding it. It is not an isolated pattern: a 2025 survey turned up what may be pre-Roman wall foundations on the Guadalquivir near Córdoba[19], and a radiocarbon-dated bone found in the same province is being studied as possible evidence of a Carthaginian war elephant. This corner of Andalusia keeps giving up pre-Roman evidence long after anyone assumed the record was closed.

A colony grand enough to argue over its own name

By the early empire, if the traditional Ituci Virtus Iulia identification is right, Rome had turned the hilltop into a colonia substantial enough to support a forum, three separate bath complexes, and a macellum, a covered market that survives in only a handful of examples anywhere on the Iberian Peninsula[10].
Which Roman city this actually was is still argued over. In 2010, archaeologist José Antonio Morena López, who directs Baena's own historical museum, considered it very likely that Augustus himself promoted the town to colony status under the name Ituci Virtus Iulia, a colony Pliny the Elder placed within the judicial district governed from Écija[11] — though the same scholar has since leaned toward a different identification, discussed below.
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Outside the walls sits the clearest evidence of how far Rome invested here: a pseudo-circular Roman amphitheatre, 64 to 67 metres across and in use from the early 1st to the late 2nd century AD[4]. Tourism materials describe its purpose plainly: gladiator combat, animal hunts, executions, the standard fare for a provincial arena of its size[12]. It was far smaller than Córdoba's own amphitheatre in the city centre, discovered decades later beneath the Rectorado building, but part of the same imperial habit of building arenas as a mark of civic weight.

A frontier again: martyrs, a castle, and an earthquake

Muslim rule held the hill from the Caliphate of Córdoba in the tenth century until at least the twelfth, known mostly through pottery and coin finds rather than standing structures. When Christian forces took it in the mid-13th century, the place was renamed Castro el Viejo, standing near the frontier between Castile and the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada[13].
A trapezoidal castle went up on the same ground by the late 13th century. It belonged for a time to King Alfonso X, who granted it to Fernán Alonso de Lastres, a commander of the Order of Santiago, for his service in the Reconquista[16].

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By the early 16th century the village below the castle had emptied out, and a hermitage dedicated to two Mozarabic martyrs went up in its place, built directly over the ruins of a Roman bath complex, the balneum calpurnianum: the fourth culture to build on this exact footprint, on top of the third. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake left it barely recognisable[14]. Another Córdoba-province castle with a long frontier-era history is Belalcázar, whose keep the Junta lists as Spain's tallest.

Ninety percent of the story is still in the ground

The park has welcomed visitors since 2011[2], but the archaeology itself moves far slower than the gate schedule. The last published estimate, from January 2021, put excavated ground at roughly 10% of the walled 10.5-hectare interior[3]. Do the arithmetic and that leaves something like nine hectares, most of five different cultures' worth of building, still under the topsoil today.
Most of what has already come out of the ground does not stay on the hill, either. Statues, inscriptions and other finds are catalogued and displayed mostly at the Museo Histórico y Arqueológico de Baena[15], though at least one piece, a marble togate statue, sits in Córdoba's own Archaeological Museum instead[20]. Readers curious how a nearby dig handles the same question can compare notes with Mellaria, another Roman-era excavation in Córdoba province.
Readers chasing the fuller sweep of Córdoba's layered past, Roman, Caliphal and medieval alike, can find it in Córdoba's best sites for history lovers. Even which Roman city stood on this exact hill is still argued about: most sources call it Ituci Virtus Iulia, but a 2022 find of lead pipework and coins pushed some researchers toward a different name, Bora, another town Pliny once mentioned[17][18]. Nobody has settled it, and with nine-tenths of the hill still unexcavated, that is only one of the questions still waiting under the ground.

Frequently asked questions

Was Torreparedones in Córdoba really the Roman city of Ituci Virtus Iulia?
Probably, but not certainly. In 2010, the director of Baena's own historical museum considered it very likely[11]. A 2022 study, co-authored by that same scholar, pointed to a different Plinian town instead, called Bora, after a lead pipework and coin find[17][18]. The identification is still argued over, not settled.

Sources

20 references Show
  1. baena.es (opens in a new tab)

    “al menos durante 3.500 años (desde la Edad del Cobre hasta la Baja Edad Media), diversos pueblos y culturas dejaron su huella”

  2. Wikipedia (opens in a new tab)

    “El yacimiento abrió sus puertas al público el 17 de enero de 2011”

  3. baena.es (opens in a new tab)

    “La superficie excavada en el interior de la muralla, que alberga una dimensión de 10,5 hectáreas en su totalidad, podría estimarse en un 10% en enero de 2021.”

  4. Wikipedia (opens in a new tab)

    “Alberga una forma pseudocircular, con un diámetro entre 67 y 64 metros y fue utilizado entre la primera mitad del siglo I y la segunda del siglo II.”

  5. baena.es (opens in a new tab)

    “sus 579.60 m.s.n.m. de cota lo convierten en el "techo de la Campiña"”

  6. iaph.es (opens in a new tab)

    “en torno al 600 a. C., se construyó una potente muralla con un perímetro de 1 km delimitando un espacio que supera las 10 ha.”

  7. baena.es (opens in a new tab)

    “La imagen de culto, dedicada a la diosa Caelestis, no albergaba forma humana, era un betilo estiliforme, en este caso una columna coronada por un capitel foliáceo.”

  8. iaph.es (opens in a new tab)

    “se han recogido más de 350 exvotos de piedra que representan tanto figuras humanas como miembros del cuerpo, en este caso y de forma exclusiva piernas.”

  9. Wikipedia (opens in a new tab)

    “En septiembre de 2020, tras una excavación de urgencia por unas remociones clandestinas, se encontró un segundo santuario, a unos 500 metros del primero y donde se pudieron catalogar siete exvotos dedicados a figuras zoomórficas en forma de caballo.”

  10. baena.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Las diversas excavaciones han sacado a la luz grandes monumentos romanos como el foro, de unos 528 metros cuadrados, tres termas romanas, un macellum (mercado)”

  11. iaph.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Es muy probable que el responsable de esta promoción fuese Augusto y que la ciudad no sea otra que la colonia inmune Ituci Virtus Iulia”

  12. baenaturismo.com (opens in a new tab)

    “Another significant discovery is the amphitheater, a characteristic feature of Roman cities, located outside the city walls. It hosted gladiator combats, wild animal hunts, and executions.”

  13. baena.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Tras la conquista cristiana a mediados del siglo XIII, comenzó a conocerse con el nombre de «Castro el Viejo» y se alzaba muy cercano a la frontera entre la Corona de Castilla y el Reino nazarí de Granada.”

  14. Wikipedia (opens in a new tab)

    “El templo cristiano se alzó sobre los restos de unas termas romanas conocidas como balneum calpurnianum.”

  15. Wikipedia (opens in a new tab)

    “Muchas de las estatuas y artilugios originales encontrados se hallan en el Museo Histórico y Arqueológico de Baena.”

  16. castillosyfortalezasmedievales.wordpress.com (opens in a new tab)

    “En 1269 es donado por el rey Alfonso X “el Sabio” a don Fernán Alonso de Lastres, comendador de la Orden de Santiago y alcalde de Baena, por los servicios prestados a la corona.”

  17. dialnet.unirioja.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Incluimos la editio princeps de una fistula aquaria inscrita, encontrada en los baños, que abre la posibilidad de la identificación del yacimiento con la ciudad de Bora.”

  18. cordopolis.eldiario.es — Tuberia plomo 43 monedas arqueologos inclinan bora nombre torreparedones 1 9120742 (opens in a new tab)

    “Un reciente estudio firmado por José Antonio Morena, del museo arqueológico de Baena, y Antonio Moreno Rosa, del de Cabra, sostiene como principal la hipótesis de que Torreparedones es Bora. La clave ha estado en el hallazgo... de una tubería de plomo en las termas orientales del yacimiento.”

  19. cordopolis.eldiario.es — Descubren posibles murallas primera ciudad cordoba guadalquivir 1 13487442 (opens in a new tab)

    “Contrató una prospección magnética a la entidad CM Prospections, que ha elaborado y publicado los primeros esbozos de su informe, elaborado en mayo del año pasado”

  20. iaph.es (opens in a new tab)

    “capitel ibérico, un relieve con escena oferente de época iberorromana o una escultura togada de mármol conservada en el Museo Arqueológico de Córdoba.”