Mérida

Mérida is the capital of Extremadura and part of the province of Badajoz, at 217 metres above sea level in the western-central Iberian Peninsula, crossed by the Guadiana and the Albarregas. Its population was 60,119 in 2017. The settlement was founded by the Roman Empire as Augusta Emerita in the first century BCE to settle discharged soldiers, and prospered into one of the largest cities of Roman Hispania. What survives is the reason to come, theatre, amphitheatre, bridges and aqueduct still standing in and around a working modern town rather than fenced off from it.