The reason that Mérida has so many Roman antiquities is that it was a very important city in the Empire. The Roman conquest started as early as year 19 B.C. with the invasion of the Carthaginian region and ended with the last resistance being overcome in the north-west in the same year.
The south soon came under the Roman Empire’s growing domination with a framework of roads connecting towns and strategic bridges and Iberian cities including Mérida, Cordoba, Seville and Cartagena passed into the hands of the Romans.
Have Bag, Will Travel 
Ah my dear fellow!
You are going to Trujillo after all!
Oh golly, I am full of trepidation.
I have done such a “big selling job” on the place, that it is now bound – almost INEVITABLY – to be a let-down to you both.
For in truth, it is not stunningly picturesque – like say a Toledo, or a Ronda Gorge, or a San Sebastian or (my favourite city in all Spain) a Girona/Gerona – but I would argue that it is this very “lack of the sensational” that is actually what MAKES it sensational.
I mean to say when you consider that it was from this realatively humble place that so many of “los conquistadores” hailed.
It is akin to a town like Spilsby in Lincolnshire not just being the birthplace of Sir John Franklin (which as you know, it was), but also being able to claim Raleigh, Drake and Captain Cook as natives, too!
Just out the door now to 3 nights in a £9 a night Travelodge in Kilmarnock. Alas I do not have your dosh, so live very frugally.
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Oh gosh Andrew.
I think I am becoming more slipshod by the day.
Re this para:
‘…
I mean to say when you consider that it was from this realatively humble place that so many of “los conquistadores” hailed.
…’
please correct my typo on “relatively” and delete this second entry of mine.
Right! Off to Bonnie Scotland and about my eighth drive through the Electric Brae. (They will tell you that it is an optical illusion, but do not believe a word of it.)
Kindest,
Dai Woosnam
daigress@hotmail.com
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