15 - Indigenous Houses Under the Temple Terrace

In the last quarter of the 1st century AD, the remodelling of the forum necessitated the demolition of some indigenous houses, of which the remains of two of them and two perpendicular streets can be observed today, located under the roof that reconstructs the original esplanade of the temple, at its original level. These are the best-preserved testimonies of the urban planning and construction techniques used by the populations that lived in Conimbriga before the arrival of the Romans. The houses, with square and rectangular rooms, were built of adobe on rows of small blocks of limestone tufa and have a central courtyard, a tradition that has been common to the Mediterranean world since time immemorial. Their architecture attests to the existence of regular urban planning in the city, already in the Second Iron Age (4th-1st centuries BC).