Julita Manor and open-air museum is located at the site of former Cistercian Julita abbey. The monastery was originally founded in 1160 at Viby, close to Sigtuna, but under the patronage of King Knut Eriksson, who donated land and a right to parts of the fishing at Älvkarleby, it was moved in 1180 to Säby by the lake Öljaren in Julita. The monastery was therefore also known as Säby, or Saba in Latin. It continued to receive rich donations from King Erik Knutsson (1210-1216), and later from other members of the aristocracy and royal circles. It was finally the owner of some 80 farms, mostly in Södermanland. At the time of the Protestant Reformation, King Gustavus Vasa appropriated the abbey and gave it in fief to Olof Arvidsson, a bailiff in Nyköping, in 1527. The secular estate thus created later had various possessors, including members of the Palbitzki and Lewenhaupt families.
In 1944, the Nordic Museum assumed the ownership of the estate in accordance with the will of the last private owner, Artur Bäckström. The manor is now a large open air museum, incorporating a small part of the abbey in the basement of one of its wings, which is open to the public. Together with another small building originally located outside the cloisters, this is all that can be seen of the abbey today, though archaeological excavations have revealed the full extent of the main abbey buildings.
References:The Roman Theatre of Mérida is a construction promoted by the consul Vipsanius Agrippa in the Roman city of Emerita Augusta, capital of Lusitania (current Mérida). It was constructed in the years 16 to 15 BCE. One of the most famous and visited landmarks in Spain, the Roman Theatre of Mérida is regarded as a Spanish cultural icon and was chosen as one of the 12 Treasures of Spain.
The theatre has undergone several renovations, notably at the end of the 1st century or early 2nd century CE (possibly during the reign of Emperor Trajan), when the current facade of the scaenae frons was erected, and another in the time of Constantine I (between 330 and 340), which introduced new decorative-architectural elements and a walkway around the monument. Following the theatre"s abandonment in Late Antiquity, it was slowly covered with earth, with only the upper tiers of seats (summa cavea) remaining visible.