The Seven Chairs

Welcome to the Island Park, one of Merida’s many beautiful green spaces. When it comes to parks and gardens, Merida is the second greenest city in Spain, just after Madrid. Take a look across the river to the opposite bank to see another green space, called the “Parque de las Siete Sillas”, or the Park of the Seven Chairs. From here, you should be able to spot the sculpture at its center: seven large granite monoliths created by Spanish artist Rufino Mesa. These abstract shapes depict what people could once see of the Roman theatre before it was fully excavated in 1910. For centuries, locals referred to those mysterious ruins sticking out of the ground as “las siete sillas”, the seven chairs. No one really knew what they were, but everyone wanted to. Mesa’s sculpture captures this curiosity by placing bronze books on top of each pillar, symbols of the thirst for knowledge that inspired people in the early 20th century to dig deeper, quite literally, and uncover the Roman wonders hidden beneath the soil.