AQUAE FLAVIAE
(Chaves) Trás-os-Montes, Portugal.
The modern city is the site of a Roman
municipium. The only remains are many inscriptions and
the bridge across the Tâmega, completed under Trajan
(A.D. 104). It is 140 m long and has 18 arches, six of
which are now almost completely underground. An inscription from the time of Vespasian preserved in the
bridge (it is not certain how it came to be there) records
the fact that ten people of the region contributed to a
great work which cannot be certainly identified. Could it
be the bridge itself? Or the road from Bracara to Asturica for which the bridge must have been a crossing?
Aquae Flaviae derived its importance from the road
and from its medicinal springs. There seem to have been
two baths outside the fortifications, one to the S at the
site of Tabolado, another to the N, in the vicinity of
the fort of S. Vicente. The street of Santo Antonio is
perhaps aligned along an aqueduct, no longer visible,
which once fed the N baths. The mediaeval fortifications
may follow the plan of the Roman ones, or they may be
only a reconstruction of them. The Largo da Principal
may correspond to the forum, and some of the streets
preserve the alignment of the Roman ones.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. C. Ribeiro Carvalho,
Chaves Antiga
(1929); M. Cardozo,
Algumas inscrições lusitano-romanas da região de Chaves (1943); A. Montalvão Machado, “Permanece a urbanística de Aquae Flaviae?”
Conimbriga 11 (1972) 35-39
P.
J. ALARCÃO
