Archaeologists discovered Spain's oldest known Roman library inside a villa in Córdoba

PC: Antonio López García – University of Granada Archaeologists have identified a room within the Roman villa of Fuente Álamo, near Puente Genil in Córdoba, as the oldest confirmed library on the Iberian Peninsula. A team from the University of Granada overturned an earlier theory that the space had been a shrine to the god Mithras, arguing instead that its architecture matches known patterns of Roman library design. According to the study published in the Journal of the Mediterranean, titled “New Approaches to Identifying Roman Libraries”, the researchers place Fuente Álamo as the westernmost library documented anywhere in the Roman Empire, adding a significant new chapter to the story of literary culture in Roman Spain.How archaeologists identified the ancient Roman library at Fuente Álamo For decades, the room in question at Fuente Álamo had been catalogued as a probable mithraeum, a space dedicated to the mystery cult of Mithras, popular among soldiers and officials across the Roman world. According to La Brújula Verde, the researchers behind the reassessment are Antonio López García and Javier Martínez Jiménez of the University of Granada, alongside Eduardo Cerrato Casado of t...