If you like a lot of history on your holidays, you should give Cartagena a go. Especially if Roman history is your thing. They have rather a lot of it!
Though there is more to Cartagena than just the Romans. The city is built around a beautiful natural harbour, so a boat trip around the bay is a seriously good idea. It has a very cool collection of art nouveau buildings scattered across the city centre. And the elegant and pedestrianised Calle Mayor is a relaxing stroll through the heart of the old town.
Back to the history!
There’s no getting away from the history though. But it didn’t actually start with the Romans.
Cartagena looks and sounds a bit like Carthage with a Spanish accent. And it was the Carthaginians who got the place going in 227 BCE, as an extension of their original city and power base of Carthage across the Mediterranean in North Africa (though the Carthaginians actually called it Qart Hadasht in their own language)
Carthage was the dominant power in Spain in the third century BCE. But after three punch-ups with Rome (aka the Punic Wars) the balance of power changed for good. Rome became undisputed top dog.
The Roman take-over
Cartagena became a Roman town, named Carthago Nova (New Carthage), while the original mother city in North Africa was razed to the ground by the victorious Romans.
By the 3rd century AD, Carthago Nova had become a seriously important place in the Roman world, the capital of the province of Carthaginensis, which covered a fair chunk of modern-day Spain. The Roman historian Titus Livius called it ‘urbs opulentissima omnium Hispania’ (the most opulent city in all of Hispania). So he was clearly impressed by the place.
So where to start?
The undisputed star of the show is the Teatro Romano, one of the best-preserved Roman theatres in the whole of the Iberian peninsula (only Mérida’s, over in Extremadura, is more complete).
Astonishingly, no-one knew it was there for more than 1,500 years. The invading Moors built their fishing quarter on top of it. Generations of people lived on the site after that. Part of it was covered by the city’s old cathedral. The theatre only really re-emerged after a dig lasting from 1996-2003.
In its prime, it could seat up to 7,000 spectators, with the steep banked rows of seating built into the hillside.
These days, the entrance is on Plaza de los Héroes de Cavite near the waterfront. You walk through the art nouveau facade of El Palacio Pascual Riquelme into a modern museum that explains how the place was re-discovered and showcases some of the finds.
There’s then a short tunnel under the old cathedral which leads you into the Roman auditorium itself. Go right to the cheap seats at the top for the most impressive view.
Parque de la Cornisa
if you don’t fancy going through the museum, you can get a good look at the Teatro for free by heading up to the Parque de la Cornisa, which looks down onto the rows of seating from above (photo below).
This virtual 360 degree tour of the Teatro Romano gives you a sneak preview.
Castillo de la Concepción
From the Teatro Romano, head up the hill to el Castillo de la Concepción, which dominates the waterfront of Cartagena. The Romans built a temple up here, and the Moors fortified the place. They knew Cartagena as Quartayannat al-Halfa, which I guess sounds a little bit like Cartagena if you say it fast enough.
In 1245, along came the Christians under the rather wonderfully-named Alfonso el Sabio (Alfonso the Wise) who expanded the castle. By the early 20th century, the place was a bit of a ruin and the city council seriously considered knocking it down altogether. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed and it’s now a park with peacocks!
Views from the top over the port are spectacular, and there’s a museum in the tower too. If you don’t fancy the walk back down the hill (or up the hill, for that matter), there is a lift here, cost €2. Check out a virtual reality tour of the castle here.
The Roman Forum
The next highlight is the centre of any Roman city, the Roman Forum (el Foro). Head for the Museo Foro Romano at the foot of the Molinete hill, named for the molinos – windmills – that used to stand at the top.
You enter at present-day street level and then go down through three floors of exhbitions to emerge into the Roman Forum itself. You can then walk through the ruins in a covered archaeological park, just as your average Roman citizen might have done 2,000 years ago.
The Romans hung on to Cartagena for some time after Rome itself had fallen to the invading tribes from the north. In the sixth and seventh centuries, it formed the westernmost province (Carthago Spartaria) of the Eastern Roman Empire, based in Byzantium, today’s Istanbul. That all came to a sticky end when the Visigoths took the city and burned it in 625 AD.
Casa de la Fortuna
A short stroll from the Forum lie the underground ruins of a Roman house. The Casa de la Fortuna (literally Fortune House) gives you a real idea of what it might have been like to live in a well-off Roman family during the first century AD.
You walk in through the back door of the house, and then wander through the dining room, the salon, the bedrooms and the atrium to emerge through the front door onto the Roman street outside. Check out a video reconstruction here.
Art Nouveau everywhere!
OK, so that’s enough Romans for now. Fast forward a couple of millennia to the late 19th century and the early years of the 20th. Cartagena was a boom town, mostly because of mining. The area around Cartagena had been known for its silver mines since the Carthaginians ran the place, but now there were zinc and lead mines too, mostly around La Unión just inland from Cartagena.
The evidence is still there on the Cartagena skyline – the tall chimney (la chiminea de Peñarroya) which you can see from pretty much everywhere on the waterfront was built to take the gases away from a lead smelter, now long closed.
Cartagena port was booming too, fortunes were being made – and a lot of the cash went on building in the latest style. That happened to be Art Nouveau, or Modernismo as it’s more often known in Spain.
While Gaudí was doing his thing in Barcelona, the wealthy classes of Cartagena were outdoing each other to build their houses in the latest Modernista style. Click through the gallery below to see a few highlights. Check out this modernista walking route.
Modernista buildings are everywhere in the centre of Cartagena – including plenty where the facade is being held together by steel rods while the building behind waits for refurbishment.
The waterfront
Head for Cartagena waterfront for a boat trip around the bay. The city has been the main base for Spain’s Mediterranean fleet since the 1700s, so there are forts everywhere along the coastline.
Here were based the notorious galleys, oar-powered warships that had been around since the days of the ancient Greeks. Sending prisoners to the galleys was a handy way of disposing of criminals back in the day.
For more naval history, check out the Museo Naval. Here you’ll come across the world’s first electric-powered submarine, invented by a Cartagena-based naval officer Isaac Peral. Images of the “Peral” (modestly named after Isaac himself) pop up everywhere in Cartagena, from the fridge magnets to a city centre roundabout.
Cruise ships
The waterfront is also key to Cartagena’s new way of making a living – as a stopover for cruise ships. It’s big business; some of these leviathans carry 3,000 passengers each.
Fifty thousand passengers came through the city in October 2025 alone, which I guess is more than a little overwhelming. Not everyone is a fan!
Fascinating fact!
“Viva Cartagena” means literally “Long live Cartagena!”. No surprise there!
“Viva Cartagena!” became a popular slogan during an uprising in the city in 1873 – the rebels wanted to set up a system of cantons across Spain, rather like Switzerland (so it became known as the Cantonal Rebellion). The rebellion spread across southern and eastern Spain; in Cartagena the rebels even seized naval ships in the harbour.
The central government eventually crushed the revolt, though Cartagena only capitulated after a four-month siege.
But “Viva Cartagena!” got another lease of life 50 years later. During a concert in Cartagena in 1927, the tenor tried to hit a high note and failed miserably. Rather than wait for the boos from the audience, he stepped forward and shouted “Viva Cartagena!”. He got a standing ovation!
So now apparently if someone shouts “Viva Cartagena!”, it’s to cover up a mistake. I have to say I’ve never heard this before, and neither has my wife, who is Spanish. But it’s still a good story though!
We stayed here: Sercotel Carlos lll, about a 15 minute walk from the waterfront. Comfortable, good value business hotel with parking nearby.
We ate here: good pizza at Mano a Mano on Calle Mayor.
To round off your meal, try Cafe Asiático, the drink of Cartagena. It’s made with Licor 43 (the colourful factory where they make the stuff is on the outskirts of the city), blended with coffee, condensed milk, a drop of brandy and cinnamon.
Try Murcia!
The provincial capital of Murcia is just 30 minutes up the road from Cartagena. It’s a bit off the tourist trail, but it’s well worth a visit – see my post on the top ten things to see here.
© Guy Pelham