Gateway to Ancient City Abandoned Thousands of Years Ago Discovered

A huge gateway to an ancient city has been discovered in the middle of a dried-up lake in Spain.

The city of Ullastret is thought to date back to at least the 6th century B.C., and was first discovered in the 1930s, having been abandoned in the 2nd or 3rd century B.C. It has been excavated over the past decades, with its enormous doorway having finally been unearthed.

"The latest excavations at MAC Ullastret have confirmed the existence of a monumental entrance to the lower part of the city, located in the middle of the lake of Ullastret, which was dried more than a hundred years ago. This discovery is one of the most important ones made in this group in recent years," the Museum of Archeology of Catalonia said in a Facebook post announcing the find.

The doorway is thought to be a point of access to the lower part of the city, and had been covered in huge stone blocks.

The find came during excavations by the Museum of Archeology of Catalonia and SPAHI (Polyorcetic Systems of Access to Iberian Habitats) between June 6 and 30, 2023 at the site of the dried-up Lake Ullastret, located around 75 miles northeast of Barcelona.

In 2016, the archaeologists theorized that there might be a great entranceway to the city in the lake bed, which was drained in the middle of the 19th century. These theories have now been proved correct with this recent discovery.

The huge entrance was found to be comprised of two parallel arms, each measuring 7.4 feet across. The arms are "built with large blocks of very well-worked stone, arranged perpendicularly to the section of wall that closes the enclosure on the western side of the settlement," a translated statement from the Museum of Archeology of Catalonia said. These walls hemmed a corridor 13 feet across that acted as the start of one of the main streets of the city.

The Iberian city was built by the Indigete tribe, and is the largest urban area of its era discovered in Catalonia.

Ullastret actually encompasses two settlements across the hills of Puig de Sant Andreu and Illa d'en Reixac, with this gateway being found at the northwest section of l'Illa d'en Reixac. Remains previously found within the city include remnants of houses, grain silos and temples. At its peak, the city is thought to have housed more than 6,000 people.

The gateway was found completely blocked with stone blocks. The archaeologists suggest that the reason the gate was blocked was to close the city after it had been abandoned. It is thought to have been left at the end of the third century or the beginning of the second century B.C., possibly because of the second Punic war in the northeast of the Iberian peninsula. This war lasted from 218 to 201 B.C., and was between Carthage, which ruled much of North Africa and Spain, and the Romans, who at the time were limited to Italy and the nearby islands of Sardinia and Corsica.

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The archaeologists hope to continue to study the site to gain more knowledge about the lives of the people that lived here, and the reason they abandoned the city.

"The finding confirms that over all of the Iberian archaeological site of Ullastret, there are still remains of great historical value waiting to be excavated," the statement said.

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