Tower of the Scipios

1st-century Roman funerary tower on the old Roman road north — three storeys of carved stone with battered relief figures

Address N-340 road, 5 km east of Tarragona
Admission Free; viewing from the roadside

A 9-metre Roman funerary tower standing alone in a field beside the old N-340 highway, 5 km east of Tarragona on the route of the Roman Via Augusta. The tower was originally three storeys tall, built around 1 AD as a memorial to a wealthy Tarraconensian family. The middle storey carries two badly eroded relief figures and a Latin inscription that has been almost entirely lost.

Easily missed but worth a five-minute stop if driving along the coast — pull off at the roadside layby and walk over. Most travellers come specifically for the Atlas Obscura listing. The atmospheric isolation, with the highway and the railway running past, is part of the appeal.

things to do sight
A story
The two carved figures on the tower's middle storey were long believed to represent the Scipio brothers, Roman generals who died in the Iberian campaigns of the Second Punic War. The identification has since been disproved — the tower dates to the 1st century AD, nearly two centuries after the Scipios, and the carved figures are now identified as the Eastern god Attis or local Roman deities — but the romantic medieval name has stuck.

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