TARRAGONA, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - Metropolitan see and provincial capital of the same-named province in Spain. It has an area of 2,394 sq km with a population of 215,000 inhabitants, all Catholic, distributed across 151 parishes served by 220 secular priests and 44 religious; it has 2 seminaries, 12 male religious communities, and 65 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 418).
Its suffragan dioceses are Barcelona, Gerona, Lérida, Solsona, Tortosa, Urgel, and Vich. The archdiocese is under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin under the invocation of her Nativity, with the feast celebrated on September 8.
A central Iberian site known as Callipolis, it was populated by the Ilergetes in the 6th century BC. In the Battle of Cissa, Scipio defeated the Carthaginian Hanno; from then on, the Romans called the city Tarraco and elevated it in 16 BC by Augustus to the status of a colony (Iulia Victrix Triumphalis) and capital of Hispania Tarraconensis. Thereafter seat of the imperial legate, the city flourished increasingly as an agricultural and commercial center. Its wine was renowned (Martial, 13, 118). Impressive are its Roman ruins: the amphitheater partly carved into the rock, the Palace of Augustus or Roman praetorium, the Roman theater, the Roman aqueduct, etc. It suffered devastation by the Franks in 264, was destroyed by the Goths in 460, occupied by the Moors in 714, retaken by Louis of Aquitaine and Ramon Berenguer, then again taken and sacked by the Moors; it was definitively occupied by Alfonso the Battler in 1220.
It has a rich underground series of frescoes dating from the 6th to the 2nd century BC. — See plate CXXVI.
II. CIVITAVECCHIA: See CIVITAVECCHIA.