Manises-Lucentum: a published archaeological guide for the public
For decades, the team has excavated, researched, documented, and preserved artifacts, turning years of fieldwork into a resource ready to be shared with the community. The next step is to spread this knowledge through a practical guide that invites people to explore the site with informed eyes. The Manises-Lucentum publication is a 115 page work featuring photographs that bring the ancient city to life. It is available at the MARQ museum and through the project site.
“It is essential to have a Roman city represented here and to explain it clearly with a guide”, explains Manuel Olcina, director of the Archaeological Museum of Alicante and the volume’s author. Antonio Guilabert Mas and Eva Maria Tendero Porras contributed to the project. The museum sees its duty not only as a center of rigorous scientific study but also as a conduit for community education, especially at the Lucentum site, where the public can engage with the findings in a meaningful way. (attribution: MARQ archives)
The guide, published in Spanish, Valencian, and English, emphasizes visuals to aid interpretation. It presents written descriptions of what visitors see and how life was in the ancient city, while also offering context about the whole site. The publication includes recreations that illuminate the ruins and clarify the layout, the routes, and the streets as they stood in the past. It documents the structures and their arrangement with clarity and accessibility. (attribution: MARQ archives)
“We designed it to be as graphic as possible and to use straightforward language, while maintaining scholarly rigor. It represents a concise synthesis of years of deposit research and more than sixty publications produced over four decades,” the team notes. The guide reflects ongoing archaeological progress and is priced at 18 euros. It consolidates knowledge up to 2021, capturing the state of the record when the text was finalized and noting that some sources date back to 2009. (attribution: MARQ archives)
Included in the guide is a folding map showing streets, elite buildings, defense systems, and key cisterns. It comprises four sections: the site history, the residential area with its naming of the city, the history of Tossal de Manises, and the visit itself. The publication presents sections on the site history, the layout of the buildings, and a guided tour that helps readers understand why baths, forums, shops, and streets exist as they do. It is described as a very complete guide. (attribution: MARQ archives)
The pages feature virtual scenes that animate the city, offering a graphic approach that helps readers see the site as it once was. Battles are recreated to illustrate construction and appearance, and reconstructions draw on the available documents to enrich understanding. (attribution: MARQ archives)
Excavations at Lucentum reveal the furnace of the Popilio baths and related industrial spaces. Olcina notes that studying this Roman city reveals a life recurring in the same patterns found in Rome, just scaled to fit the site. Looking ahead, a future exhibition is anticipated to reveal more discoveries and invite ongoing exploration. (attribution: MARQ archives)
Julia Parr, on behalf of the Cultural Department, highlights the importance of the publication Manises Launch. The guide collects material that has evolved over decades to bring findings and their significance to a broad audience. It contains 115 pages with more than 100 maps, illustrations, and vivid color images designed to engage readers. The aim is to make knowledge accessible, entertaining, and rigorous for society at large. (attribution: MARQ archives)
Overall, the guide serves as a steady bridge between scholarly work and public understanding, inviting readers to walk the streets, enter the baths, visit the forums, and explore the shops as they were in ancient times. It is a resource meant to educate, inspire, and inform a diverse audience about Lucentum’s history and its enduring influence on the region.