The winding layout of Sierpes Street, now one of Seville’s busiest shopping routes, hides beneath its pavement a geological and urban history that has gradually revealed itself through excavation. Far from being a mere pedestrian axis, this corridor in the historic district coincided in antiquity with a paleochannel, an abandoned arm of the ancient Guadalquivir estuary that in Roman times flowed through the heart of the city and reached depths close to eleven meters, according to ABC Sevilla.
The existence of these lost waterways is not unusual in a territory shaped by a river that, before it was tamed, drew meanders and secondary branches that penetrated what we now know as the Old Quarter. Geomorphologists and archaeologists from the University of Seville have spent decades reconstructing this landscape prior to intensive urbanization. Their conclusions converge in noting that one of those branches entered through the current Alameda de Hércules, continued toward the Trajano and Amor de Dios area, crossed the Sierpes axis, Tetuán, skirted the present-day Plaza de San Francisco and exited along the route of the Avenida de la Constitución toward the Arenal area.
Findings Demonstrating the Existence of This River
On analyzing these works there is a solid consensus around the navigable character of some stretches of the paleochannel. The depths recorded in archaeological borings, together with the discovery of port structures, reinforce the idea that this branch was a key element in the economic fabric of Roman Hispalis. It would not be a large maritime traffic canal, though it was an auxiliary waterway that allowed the movement of small vessels, access to riverside warehouses, and a direct connection with the main estuary of the Guadalquivir. The strategic position of this arm, penetrating the city through zones that are now fully urbanized, helps explain why Hispalis became such a significant commercial hub. Latin sources already underscored the port vitality of the city, and these modern findings confirm the existence of multiple docking points spread around the urban environment.
La Campana, a Key Point in Reconstructing the Past
The archaeological intervention carried out in 2014 at La Campana offered one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the existence of the paleochannel that cut through Roman Seville. During the installation of underground containers, the remains of a robust Roman harbor dam emerged, built with ashlar blocks and hydraulic fills that marked precisely the margin of the ancient river arm. Its depth and excellent state of preservation allowed defining the orientation and width of the channel with a level of detail that had not been possible until then. This finding confirmed what for decades had been a hypothesis based on geomorphological studies, and provided compelling archaeological evidence that, combined with previous interventions, helped to delineate the route of the river that disappeared through the heart of the city.
The Palafitos of Cine Imperial, First Documented Evidence
Archaeology had already pointed to the existence of the paleochannel long before the Campana discovery. In 1960, during works at the old Cine Imperial, the researcher Colantes de Terán identified wooden structures and remains of stilts linked to a riverside environment. That excavation, carried out at a time when the preservation of urban heritage was still limited, could be documented thanks to the speed of the team that intervened, which allowed preserving an exceptional set of data for the era. Over time, sedimentological studies and comparisons with later findings have confirmed that those remains fit a landscape dominated by an active or semi-active river arm during the early centuries of our era. The stilts are interpreted as construction elements associated with damp, unstable ground in permanent transformation, a feature consistent with the presence of a river running beneath what is today the heart of the historic center.
The Ship at Plaza Nueva, Evidence of the Channel’s Boundary
Another decisive clue appeared in 1981 during works on a metro entrance at Plaza Nueva. At eleven meters depth a Roman vessel was located, accompanied by an anchor found at a different height but linked to the same environment. The position of both artifacts indicates that the river arm reached roughly this area before turning toward the axis of the current Avenida de la Constitución to join the main channel, i.e., the Guadalquivir dock. Subsequent investigations suggest that both channels, the main one and this secondary branch, coexisted probably until the 11th century, when natural and human changes to the estuary finally sealed the paleochannel beneath sediment layers and later urban infill.
