The Phoenician City of Baria
The Phoenician city known as Baria by the Romans lies underneath the quiet fishing village of Villaricos in Cuevas del Almanzora, a municipality of Almería province in southern Spain. Baria was founded in the seventh century BC on a peninsula at the mouth of the Almanzora River, a navigable inland waterway, with the city’s natural harbour perfectly positioned for trade with the local population and wider Mediterranean world.
Phoenician Baria was a prosperous commercial hub in control of the export of silver, copper, iron and lead extracted from the rich mines of the Sierra Almagrera mountains. Indigenous communities meanwhile gained access to a range of unfamiliar and exotic goods imported from the east, along with fundamental technologies like the alphabet, the potter’s wheel, and wine and olive oil cultivation. The city also had a thriving fishing and salting industry making preserved fish and meat products stored in amphorae for both local and international trade.
Just north of the ancient city, the surviving necropolis of Villaricos contains more than 2,000 burials spanning centuries, with the earliest dating from the arrival of the Phoenicians who built around 50 monumental hypogea (underground chamber tombs cut into rock) that were used by elite families over generations. Villaricos is the largest Phoenician necropolis so far discovered in Spain, and the grave goods found including gold, silver and bronze jewellery, ivory ornaments, alabaster urns, Greek ceramics and painted ostrich eggs from North Africa indicate the wealth and high status of its occupants.
Starting in 1890, the Belgian archaeologist Luis Siret spent 20 years excavating areas of the Baria site, and as well as discovering the harbour and necropolis, unearthed the remains of a temple and sanctuary dedicated to the supreme Phoenician goddess Astarte and her successor Tanit, the chief deity of Carthage.
Minimal archaeological work at the site has been carried out since then mainly because the land is privately owned, and despite being unexcavated and declared a Site of Cultural Interest in 2005, the remains of Baria are continually threatened by urban development, most recently by plans to build holiday homes over the location of the Phoenician city's ancient harbour.
The Villaricos Archaeological Site is open from Wednesday to Sunday from 10am to 2pm.