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Cordoba,

a universal city distinguished with four UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ

More than one million visitors come each year

to contemplate the marvels in the Cordoba of the Caliphate.

But beneath these extraordinary monuments

lies another, more ancient and unknown, Cordoba that conceals its history.

Islamic Cordoba never would have become as important as it was

without the Roman city.

Now, a National Geographic contributor will use the latest technology

to discover what's below its buildings and streets,

seeking to reveal its most deeply hidden mysteries.

When we visualize something, we aren't just creating a space,

but also recreating how it was used over time.

Fabio Amador joins the greatest experts in the city's history

to uncover and recreate the lost past of Cordoba,

a key place in the history of Western civilization.

Fabio Amador isn't just an archaeologist.

He's a time traveler.

Working for National Geographic,

he's explored some of the most important archaeological digs in Mesoamerica.

The pyramids of Teotihuacán, the Mayan ruins of the Yucatán Peninsula,

and many more major archaeological sites.

Now, Fabio Amador is in Cordoba on a high-tech adventure

utilizing ground-penetrating radar, LIDAR, and 3-D scanning.

He will join the historians and archaeologists working on site

to visually revive a hidden city that is more than 2,000 years old.

I've come to Cordoba in search of a hidden past.

And to uncover it, I want to meet one of the greatest experts in Roman history

and in the later cultures that inhabited the city.

- Hi, how are you? - Good morning. Good to see you.

Desiderio Vaquerizo is a professor of archaeology

at the University of Cordoba.

To my surprise, he decides to show me an ancient sewage system.

But not just any sewage system.

I feel like we are exploring the skeleton of the Roman world.

We are right in the underworld.

Yes, indeed. It's important to realize that all this was underground.

Keep in mind that we're on the first level of the parking garage

of a modern, privately owned building.

And several meters below us, there's a line that marks, shall we say,

the underworld of the Roman city itself, which is the sewage system,

which was just as good as ours,

and which shows the enormous scale and the magnitude of this sort of urban plan,

as well as the image that the new Roman Cordoba wanted to project

at the service of the Imperial idea.

To obtain a volumetric image of these sewers,

I'm going to use a laser scanner.

By means of a laser beam, the scanner calculates the distances

to the objects in front of me.

A revolving mirror makes this beam of light hit every point on its surface,

creating a cloud of points, which, once processed,

will allow me to understand what it's like

and what all this infrastructure was like in the past.

So, we're talking about a triple sewer system.

The one in the center, which, as you can see,

is at a slightly lower level, drained the amphitheatre.

Look at the size of the inspection tower. It's huge.

Of course, amphitheatres were where the Romans held the spectacles

where blood was spilled.

Cleaning up afterwards must have been essential,

and must have required large amounts of water.

This concept of public health services, of water supply, of waste water removal,

the idea that it was essential for the city to get rid of its waste water--

To find something like this, we would have to jump ahead a lot in history,

probably to the 19th century in many cities. It's totally modern.

After showing me the sewer,

Desiderio takes me to the spot that fed this drainage system,

a dig where he's working now,

and where one of this city's great monuments used to stand.

We're outside the Roman city walls in the western outskirts,

at the excavations of the ruins of the colony's amphitheatre.

How big is this?

Well, what we have here is a tiny part of a truly colossal building

whose exact dimensions we don't know,

but which was probably among the largest in its time,

and which must have measured much more than 150 meters along its main axis.

What were the events that were held in this amphitheatre?

How do we know what they were?

The amphitheatre in Rome had a very clear function.

It was the building dedicated to blood sports,

fundamentally, fights that pitted man against man,

man against beast, and beast against beast,

as well as the damnatio ad bestias-- that is, execution by wild animals,

and many other sorts of fights, all somehow turned into a show.

This big building was integrated in a reurbanization of the area

that also included the construction of a large avenue 16 meters wide,

with a double portico and triple sewer system,

which made it possible to handle the huge number of people

that a building of this sort holds,

and to bring them and take them back to the city.

Cordoba was largely a reflection of Rome.

Its rulers imitated the Imperial capital and sometimes surpassed its splendor.

Its religion, customs, and way of life

were similar to those of other large Roman cities.

My mission is to solve mysteries of the past,

but to do that, I need to know how the city was planned,

and how the inhabitants of Roman Cordoba lived and died.

To achieve it, I'm meeting Ana Ruiz,

an archaeologist who has specialized in the burial rites of that time.

Since the proclamation of the first known law in Rome in the 5th century BC,

known as the Law of the Twelve Tables,

there was a requirement to always bury human remains outside the city,

whether an interment or a cremation.

It was completely forbidden to bury people within the city walls.

The diseases transmitted by corpses and the smell of decomposition

were the reasons that led the Roman authorities

to prohibit burials within city limits.

So, in this case, the city walls became the border

between the city of the living, who remained inside,

and the city of the dead, who were left outside.

Only important people, such as the emperors,

could enjoy the privilege of being buried within the city.

Fabio Amador has arrived in Cordoba,

at a key moment in the archaeological research.

Although historians have been working for many years in this city,

the last 30 have borne the most fruit.

On the one hand, the number of research projects has grown,

and on the other, the boom in construction has enabled some unexpected discoveries.

All this has completely changed the consensus

on what Cordoba's urban structure was like.

The amphitheatre, the sewer system,

how residents spent their free time,

and the relationship of Cordobans to death in Roman times

makes me rethink the city's history.

Today the prevailing image of Cordoba

features Islamic culture as its main reference point,

but I'm discovering something unexpected.

The Roman city of Corduba

had a very carefully planned and meaningful urban structure.

The checkerboard design, the city walls, and the large public buildings

where the people met to take political decisions,

have fun, or pray, established the main axes of the streets.

Two tombs stand on the main Corduba-Hispalis road,

outside the city walls but still quite close to them and to the city gates.

They were discovered in 1993,

and are a clear example of extramural burials.

It was also the custom to locate burial sites beside the roads.

A large number of epitaphs and burial inscriptions

have been found along these boundaries.

It's increasingly obvious to me with each step.

Under the well-known Arab Cordoba

lie many centuries of undiscovered history.

Rome was here first and shaped this city in a profound way.

This should be my line of research if I want to understand the past

and whatever is hiding underground in Cordoba.

But why did Rome choose this spot for the provincial capital?

Who were the first people to arrive here,

and what made this city one of the most important in the Empire?

Cordoba's special geographic location was the reason for its founding.

The city stands on fertile flatlands along the Guadalquivir River,

and at the foot of a mountain range that was once full of valuable metals,

such as copper, gold, and silver.

The river connected the city with the sea,

the metals from the mountains fueled industry and trade,

and the abundant water supply allowed extensive farming.

Nevertheless, although the first human settlement

was created here about 5,000 years ago, it wasn't until the 1st century AD,

when Corduba had already been declared a Roman colony,

that the city reached the level of importance and splendor

that would mark its history forevermore.

After several days investigating what is hidden in the city,

now I want to look into whether it is possible

to understand modern Cordoba without Rome.

Desiderio and I have agreed to meet at the School of Humanities.

He wants to show me one of his most important discoveries.

In the image, you can see an overall diagram of the city of Cordoba.

To the east lies the circus,

with that great dramatic setting presided by the Roman temple.

In the city center stood the colonial forum,

the forum adiectum, which was modeled on the forum of Augustus,

and to the west we have the amphitheatre.

All this was connected by a ceremonial road, the Decumanus Maximus.

The city was structured around the Cardo Maximus,

which was the main north-south road,

and the Decumanus Maximus, which was the east-west axis.

Roman Corduba was founded in the mid-2nd century BC,

at the same settlement where the Iberian people called the Turdetani lived,

today Cruz Conde Park.

Later, the city moved to a natural terrace that was easy to defend,

located a scant 750 meters from the earlier site.

This place then became the center of Cordoba.

After a bloody war between Caesar and the sons of Pompey

that partially destroyed the city,

Cordoba reemerged to become the capital of the province of Baetica,

with the title Colonia Patricia.

It was the start of an era of splendor

in which the city's great monuments were built,

of which we can still find vestiges today.

The circus, the temple, the theater, and the amphitheatre

comprised the city's offering of entertainment.

Together, they created a common idea, the idea of belonging to a single structure.

It was the ideal place to display the power of Rome,

but also to create shared signs of identity.

These large constructions are going to guide my research.

Thanks to Desiderio, I've learned how the city's main roads were laid out

and the different spaces for the living and the dead.

But will I be able to find more remains of the great buildings of Roman Cordoba?

To that end, I'm going to meet with María Dolores Baena,

the director of the Archaeological Museum of Cordoba.

Part of what I'm looking for lies beneath the museum.

What's so attractive about the museum

is that it's the very image of the city,

where that whole mix of cultures become visible,

where we can see all the elements that form part of the city.

Through the museum we can explain its history, its life, its custom,

why we are the way we are today.

In addition to having a magnificent collection

from all the historical periods, many museums from around the world ask us

to loan them pieces for their exhibitions.

The museum itself has some elements that make up that image, that soul of the city.

We're on top of Cordoba's Roman Theater, which is open to visitors.

That's why this museum is both a blend and the image of what the city is.

What we've got in the basement is the remains of the infrastructure

at the foundation level, because it was a quarry within the city limits.

When the theater fell into disuse, it was gradually dismantled

to construct other buildings.

What they did was to take these architectural elements,

that ashlar, that stone, to raise another building.

And bit by bit, they left behind what was of no use to them,

which was the decorative elements.

That decoration allows us to reconstruct, for example,

the whole façade of the theater as it was.

It wasn't wars, nor earthquakes, that destroyed these buildings,

but rather neglect and time.

The stonework and what little is left of the seating give me a starting point

to visually recreate the ancient theater.

What can't we see in those theaters? How a Roman theater was built.

And that's what we have here.

Because we can see the way it was built, we can see the opus caementicium,

which is the first known concrete in history,

and which set there 2,000 years ago.

I've managed to reproduce what's left of the theater in three dimensions

and to reveal the designed foundation,

and a part of the area destined for the spectators.

Once again, by scanning what's left of the theater,

we can capture at least some of the elements of the seating

and, well, that begins to give us an idea of how big that monument was.

What's more, I think this tool is a tool for the future,

that can make it possible to easily reconstruct the whole building.

Because one of the criteria which makes things easier in Roman architecture

is that it is extraordinarily modular.

That means that if we know a part,

just a small part of this kind of building,

we can recreate practically all the rest.

But to give you an idea of its size, look at this.

It's a photo superimposed on a map of modern Cordoba,

and the theater takes up a bunch of buildings,

including the convent garden, historical services, et cetera, et cetera.

That's why it may be impossible to excavate it all,

and why it's brilliant that precisely the Archaeological Museum

is a 16th-century palace that was declared a National Heritage of Cultural Interest,

so it's impossible to demolish it in order to dig beneath it.

We have to play precisely with new technologies to be able to see the past.

The big buildings tell me about the city, but I'm also looking for clues

that can show me how those Roman Cordobans lived.

I want to know what their homes were like, how they were decorated,

and how they reflected their culture within their walls.

I'm still looking for answers,

and this time, I'll find them someplace that I never would have imagined.

Following María Dolores Baena's directions I've reached the Palacio del Bailío,

a palace in the heart of the city that's been turned into a hotel.

I'm meeting here with Carlos Castejón, the former owner of the building,

to find out how a 16th-century palace, like so many other buildings in Cordoba,

can hide underground surprises.

Carlos had lived in this house since he was a child,

and remembers a crucial moment in its history.

Well, when firewood and coal were carried from the front door

to the back of the house, that made the house quite dirty.

One day, my grandmother was complaining to my grandfather

about how filthy that made the house.

So, to solve the problem, he said to her in a rather manly outburst,

"María Isabel, don't worry. I'm going to make a tunnel

that will go from the back of the house to the entrance for the workers to use.

And they won't track dirt into your salon anymore."

And so, they started tunneling.

And when they had dug halfway, they found the Roman ruins.

And that was how

they discovered one of the best-preserved Roman domus

found anywhere in the world today.

This typical upper-class Roman house lay hidden underground.

A Roman domus had multiple rooms, such as bedrooms, a dining room,

an atrium to receive visitors, bathrooms, and many other amenities.

But not all Romans could afford this level of comfort.

The humbler classes lived in insulae, very simple buildings

filled with apartments that often had only one room.

The poor quality of the materials used to build the insulae

made them vulnerable to frequent collapses and fires.

Fortunately, the domus were built with better-quality materials,

allowing houses like this one to survive down to our times

as a valuable source of information for archaeologists.

Inside contemporary modern buildings

we have the ruins of Roman houses,

what we call domus, which are single-family homes.

These domus feature mosaics, and these mosaics are also preserved.

In some areas of Cordoba they are preserved just as in this museum.

These mosaics can help me

to better understand how the people of the city lived.

To learn more about them, I'm meeting Luz Neira,

an archaeologist who is an expert in Roman mosaics

at the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos,

which houses a collection of mosaics recovered from beneath the square

called the Plaza de la Corredera.

Mosaics are an essential source of information to reconstruct

the history of the Roman Empire, and especially the history of the elite,

because mosaics are preserved in the place for which they were originally designed.

This is essential because other ancient art forms are moveable,

they've been transported.

But within the misfortune of falling into ruin, the collapsed roofs and walls

protect the mosaics so that we find them in their original location.

And that location, as is logical when talking about a mosaic such as this one,

an opus tessellatum mosaic, is linked to domestic life in the large domus

in a city like Corduba Colonia Patricia or in a big Roman country house.

The Romans were very superstitious,

especially regarding those issues related to death.

Magic symbols, tablets bearing oaths,

or curses on the epitaphs that accompanied the dead were quite common.

And that superstitious protection was also employed in their homes.

Their mosaic floors feature numerous elements that reflect those Roman beliefs.

The Romans were terrified of evil spirits, of hexes,

and that's why they protected themselves with these kinds of symbols.

Anyone who thinks that these are merely decorative motifs

is tremendously mistaken, because in reality what the head of Medusa represents

is a form of protection for these rooms, above all to ward off evil spirits.

The scenes depicted in the mosaics allow me to understand

part of the history of Roman Cordoba,

a heritage which, gauging by what I'm seeing in this marvelous city,

is still quite alive.

From the tower of the Alcázar, the Royal Stables are going to put me

on the trail of another of the elements that left the deepest mark

on the lives of the Romans and that the city's inhabitants valued most.

The Romans held Spanish horses in very high esteem.

Horses were their method of transport, essential work tools,

and a symbol of social class.

At the eastern end of the Decumanus Maximus

lies Cordoba's spectacular circus.

That's where the Romans held their horse races,

which they were extremely passionate about,

just as they were about the games featuring gladiators.

Jockeys were revered in the same way that many star athletes are today,

and the winning horses, along with their trainers,

were glorified, and their feats immortalized in mosaics.

The circus, where the famous horses in the mosaics raced,

has since disappeared.

The few ruins that remain lie beneath the Orive Palace.

But a temple overlooked the circus.

Some remains of it can still be found, and a tiny part has been rebuilt.

It's the perfect opportunity

for me to reconstruct it digitally using the laser scanner.

What happened to such magnificent constructions as this one?

Why did they disappear?

During the 4th century AD, the decadence of the Western Roman Empire

reached the city of Cordoba.

Most of the public buildings fell into disrepair

and their materials were reused to build new constructions.

It was a slow transformation of the city that took several centuries

and erased most of Cordoba's Roman heritage.

After the Romans came a period that we call Late Antiquity,

which is when the Visigoths ruled.

That period is being studied now and had a lot of influence on what would become

the Cordoba of al-Andalus, Islamic Cordoba.

Archaeological research has shown that the city's urban design

underwent substantial changes during the 6th and 7th centuries,

from roads to hydraulic infrastructures, and even in homes and public spaces.

The Christian community's contributions were especially important,

in the form of churches and basilicas, which even today are little known.

The Moors took over from the Visigoths,

and expanding on what the Romans had created,

they once again placed Cordoba among the world's most important cities.

The Mosque-Cathedral is Cordoba's most distinctive emblem.

The splendor of the Umayyad caliphate,

which began with the arrival of Abd al-Rahman the First,

eclipsed the city's past.

But the information that I have suggests that inside here, too,

if you know where to look, are hidden vestiges of Rome and the Visigoths.

Construction of the Great Mosque began in the year 786,

and immediately, everyone who visited it greatly admired it.

The mosque grew as each new ruler rose to the throne,

ordering a series of expansions that made it more important, bigger,

more beautiful, and more spectacular.

Finally, after reconquering the city, the Christians built inside it the cathedral

that today juts up from the building's silhouette.

To learn more about the city's past

in the period between the Romans and the Arabs,

I'm meeting with the archaeologist Alberto León

and the engineer Rafael Ortiz, who are in charge of an ambitious project

to discover what's hidden beneath the Mosque.

Their studies suggest that under the floor lie a basilica

and a monumental Christian complex.

Their findings may become the basis of a truly important discovery,

and may confirm the idea that Cordoba has witnessed a continuous flow of cultures

through its gates.

What we are looking at here-- Is that a basilica or not?

What do you think?

What we're saying, so as not to keep making the same mistakes,

is that we shouldn't be talking about Saint Vincent's Basilica,

and that the fundamental question is not to interpret this structure

as part of Saint Vincent's Basilica.

What we're proposing is that we should work from the concept

of the episcopal complex, that is, of a large neighborhood within the city

that is much bigger than the basilica, and that corresponds to part of the chapel

in the mosque, and is oriented in different ways in different phases.

The archaeologists maintain the hypothesis

that when Abd al-Rahman the First arrived in Cordoba in the year 756,

an episcopal complex that the Christians had built in the 6th and 7th centuries

already stood inside the city walls.

The complex was very large, covering more than two hectares,

and included several Christian buildings in addition to Saint Vincent's Basilica.

It's believed that Abd al-Rahman the First ordered the Great Mosque

to be built on top of the basilica.

The Romans had disappeared centuries earlier,

and the Visigoths reused the materials

in their temples, houses, buildings, and monuments.

The Muslims did the same thing.

The architecture is very dynamic in this area.

That means that a lot of the monuments were built in this part of the city,

and one of the things Rafa has studied is proof of that.

The reuse of the architectural elements that decorated that building

in the construction of the Mosque.

You've found that in this context too?

During the construction of the first mosque,

they used a lot of scavenged material, both Roman and Visigothic,

and we can see when we enter the building pedestals, shafts, capitals.

They're all elements that have been recovered from various buildings.

And the interesting thing is that in this dynamic context,

many of those buildings, many of those materials, were made with Roman elements

that had already been reused in Visigothic constructions.

We may never be able to excavate nor see

the Christian and Roman ruins beneath the Mosque-Cathedral.

Current and future studies will be carried out with the use of indirect techniques

that won't destroy the heritage preserved today,

and are based on the three-dimensional analysis of images

like the techniques Fabio Amador uses.

Many mysteries will remain buried underground,

and that is the great challenge archaeologists face--

how to study the past without destroying the present.

I understand why such beauty has eclipsed the city's Roman past.

But Rome is also present here, in the heart of the Mosque.

Rome forms part of everything I'm coming across in Cordoba,

its houses, its monuments, its urban design.

Roman Cordoba grew to a population of 50,000

in one of the warmest areas in the south of the Iberian Peninsula.

Nevertheless, its inhabitants enjoyed

gardens, public baths, and plots of fruits and vegetables.

The water supply was not a problem for Cordoba.

My next step will let me discover

the Romans' precise and astonishing hydraulic engineering.

On my walks through the streets and patios of Cordoba,

I'm constantly surprised by how green it is,

by the number of plants that cool off this city in the scorching south of Spain.

So, I want to know where all that water comes from

and how it reaches every corner of the city.

Despite what many people think, Cordoba is a region rich in water.

The Guadalquivir River was always a transport route to the sea,

but water for farming and domestic uses was also supplied to the city,

and is still supplied today from the area's generous water table.

Real pioneers, the Romans were specialists in bringing underground water up

to where it could be used on the surface,

and their technology was very advanced for the times.

The Arabs were great masters at channeling and handling water,

and they appreciated the Romans' work and engineering.

Wells, cisterns, and aqueducts were reused to bring water to the palaces

and to water gardens like the ones that must have adorned the Great Mosque

and the old Alcázar, or fortress.

In Roman times, those aqueducts fed large cisterns that distribute water

throughout the city, whether to public fountains open to everyone

or to certain homes that had their own water supply.

In Moorish times, the Roman fountains, wells, houses, and aqueducts

supplied water to large buildings like the Grand Mosque,

or the Alcázar of the Caliphate.

I'm entering a parking garage below Cordoba's bus station,

where I can find the remains of a Roman aqueduct.

It was so efficient that when it was discovered in the 1990s,

it still carried water to the city.

It had been working ever since ancient Roman times.

This three-dimensional reconstruction

will help Fabio Amador to understand

how this urban circulatory system was organized and used to bring the water

that the Romans, Visigoths, and Muslims drank in Cordoba.

Following the trail of the city's water,

I descend back into the underground belly of Cordoba.

I want to keep discovering the city's hidden history.

I've reached a place known today as the Baths of the Caliphate's Fortress.

The Caliphate's most influential men came here to establish social relationships,

plan political conspiracies, rest,

and, of course, carry out the purification rites before praying.

According to the historical chronicles,

in the Cordoba of Caliph Abd al-Rahman III

there were some 300 public baths, and that number doubled under Almanzor,

another of the city's most important rulers.

The public baths became so popular that they have survived down to our times,

and even today, several of them are still operating in the city of Cordoba.

The baths are an example of social and cultural sophistication.

All thanks to water, and the Romans' mastery of the techniques to find it,

bring it up out of the ground, and transport it.

These aqueducts used to bring water from the nearby mountains,

and that's where my investigation is taking me.

Following the trail of water leads me to a magical city

that disappeared only a few years after it dazzled the world.

Medina Azahara was the high point of the Cordoba of the Caliphs.

It competed with Damascus, Istanbul, and Cairo in importance and beauty.

Founded between the years 936 and 940 in the foothills

of the mountains outside Cordoba, just eight kilometers from the city,

it was the headquarters of the Caliphate's administration

and the official residence of Abd al-Rahman III,

who ordered its construction.

One of the most beautiful cities ever built on the Iberian Peninsula

during the Islamic Period, it drank the water brought by an ancient Roman aqueduct

and raised from wells that the Arabs dug.

And so, Rome supported the progress of this new era of splendor,

and the Muslims, accustomed to living in arid climes,

improved the Romans' canals, wells, and irrigation ditches

to the point of becoming true experts in hydraulic technology.

Using a laser scanner and the innovative GigaPan technology,

I'm going to reconstruct some of the splendor of these halls.

GigaPan is an automated robotic hardware to capture

extremely high-definition panoramas right down to the most minuscule detail.

Once the area to photograph is set, the GigaPan system divides the objects

in the selected area into rows and columns

and calculates the number of images required.

Then the robotic arm does the rest, and a computer program combines

the hundreds of photographs into one single, incredibly high-quality image.

The ruins around me are barely a fuzzy sketch

of the lost city hidden beneath my feet.

I want to know what this city was like, and what efforts are being made today

to salvage the splendor that I've read about in history books.

Contemporary historical accounts say

that it took up to 10,000 people

to build Medina Azahara from the start of construction in 936.

Abd al-Rahman used the best building materials of the period,

marble, precious stones, gold worked by the best craftsmen

to make the city a symbol of power, just as Abd al-Rahman intended.

I walk part of the city, taking notes and analyzing everything I see.

Alberto Montejo, the director of the Medina Azahara complex,

comes out to help me in my quest.

Alberto wants to show me the Hall of Abd al-Rahman III, or Salón Rico,

the greatest expression of 10th-century architecture and art.

The first thing the visitor sees in Medina Azahara,

and above all in the Salón Rico, is power.

In other words, the person who sits back there, that is, the Caliph,

is demonstrating that he is able to build this because he is

the most powerful person on the Iberian Peninsula or in the Western Mediterranean.

That is the message. And depending on your cultural level, you're going to understand

what's on the wall because it's a very clear message.

The structure of the reception hall was designed to have three levels.

One part is earthly, with plant motifs,

another is the framing section, and features arches,

while the highest part is the astral section,

and is decorated with cosmic elements.

It is a celestial hall, a representation of the cosmos that envelops the person

who is God's representative on Earth, and who sits back here.

Spread out all over the Salón Rico lies an enormous puzzle,

for which there is no model to follow in order to assemble it.

We've calculated that there are between 500,000 and one million

of these fragments of arabesques,

which are the decorative elements that cover the wall.

We worked with 5,000 fragments just in the most recent operation

to reconstruct the façade and the counterfaçade alone.

We've collected about 25,000 but the work is very arduous

because thousands of these fragments

appeared in the big excavations of the 1940s and the '50s.

They're still kept in the area that's closed to visitors,

but they're scattered all over the dig.

We've been given instructions to collect them because they're deteriorating,

and to move them into the museum, which was created ten years ago.

Abd al-Rahman III surrounded himself

with the best doctors, mathematicians, and astronomers,

all at the service of the Court.

Knowledge was power, and al-Hakam II, his son and successor as Caliph,

was a supporter of that idea.

We believe that what the intellectuals were doing with the design,

with the whole symbolic program represented here,

was to express, in a very clear way, all the scientific achievements

that were made in the Court of al-Andalus, that is, in the Court of Medina Azahara,

which surpassed those of his opponents, of his enemies,

the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad.

The size of the archaeological site is tremendous,

approximately 115 hectares,

of which they have so far been able to excavate only ten percent.

Each season at the digs, new surprises appear,

and new fragments that have to fit into this huge puzzle.

But beneath the Medina Azahara that we can see, under this Salón Rico,

there are more constructions from the previous phase of Medina Azahara,

which can help us to understand how the urban design and art of Medina Azahara

had evolved since the beginning.

In the year 1010, a little less than a century after the creation

of Medina Azahara, a civil war against the Berbers razed the city,

and the destruction was so great that even its name and location were lost.

In just a few years, the city became a dream of the past.

When the city was abandoned, it also abandoned us completely.

At the beginning of the 11th century,

the city served as a source of building materials, of capitals and pedestals.

Metals were stripped from the doors and lead pipes were yanked out.

And later, beginning in the Christian era, in the Early Middle Ages,

Medina Azahara was used as a quarry, the perfect quarry,

because builders could obtain stone blocks that had already been cut.

Medina Azahara is still alive and surprises us constantly.

A team including researchers from the Autonomous University of Madrid,

the German Archaeological Institute, and Alberto himself,

has just made a much-awaited discovery--

the eastern entrance to the main square of the city.

The entrance gate, which was four meters wide,

was lost when the city burned in the year 1010.

Now the archaeologists have found the remains of the catastrophe--

hinges, nails, ornaments, and roofing tiles.

Barely a week after the digging began,

the entrance to the plaza started to emerge from the earth.

Similar in size to the Plaza Mayor in Madrid,

the place where the Caliph received ambassadors and emissaries

is returning from its past of splendor, violence, and neglect.

Medina Azahara, like all of the city of Cordoba, is alive, hidden underground,

waiting for the urban underworld to resurface and tell us its secrets.

It seemed as if everything had been written about the history of this place,

and yet here I am, among ruins that have hardly begun to tell us their story.

Employing various techniques, I have managed to reconstruct and visualize

in a very precise way some of the archaeological treasures

that remain out of sight.

All this work will be available so that other archaeologists and researchers

can continue advancing and shedding more light

on a past that is still largely unknown.

After using 21st-century technology, I return to that of the 19th century,

the technology often used by the archeologists and travelers of other times

to depict cities like this one--

a camera lucida.

Perhaps the city's conspicuous splendor prevents us from seeing

that a major part of Cordoba is still waiting to be explored.

But if there is anything that I take away from here as a sure fact,

it's that behind every discovery there is an indelible mark.

Rome will always remain.