Ciutadella ibèrica de Calafell, Calafell

The Iberian Citadel of Calafell is the name given to the archaeological site of Alorda Park, in the municipality of Calafell, on the Costa Dorada of Tarragona. The uniqueness of this site is that experimental archaeology has been applied.

This archaeological site has been excavated since 1980 by the archaeologists Joan Santacana and Joan Sanmartí. The settlement, facing the sea, is a fortified enclosure that was founded at the beginning of the 6th century BC, in the Iberian period. It is interpreted as the seat of a chieftainship of the Iberian tribe of the Cossetanos; inside and surrounded by powerful walls with the reproduction of a Roman tower, there is a palace and numerous outbuildings. It underwent major alterations at the end of the 4th century and its end is related to the war crisis of the Second Punic War, when the consul Cato the Elder crushed the general uprising of Iberian tribes against Rome.

The particularity of this archaeological site is that it is the first archaeological site in the Iberian Peninsula that has been reconstructed with experimental archaeological techniques, on the same remains, thanks to a project designed and executed by Joan Santacana between 1992 and 1994. It is an example of architectural reconstruction of an archaeological site, as well as didactic museography. The reconstruction allows you to see and enter the houses, climb the walls, towers, as well as examine reproductions of objects of the material culture of the Iberians.