Forua nr. Guernica

A red-marble Roman altar recycled as holy-water stoup in the parish church of Forua is reported in Barandiaríán (1932). Studied in Fernández Palacios (2004): the altar was known by 1906, when it was written about; the altar appears to have been dedicated to an indigenous divinity; it had been discovered in an area owned by the Franciscans , and was turned into a holy-water stoup at the parish church of St. Martin of Forua, located in its porch, to the left of the main entrance. This source identifies the material as a red marble of local extraction [="mármol
rojo de Ereño"] and gives a transcription of the inscription in square capitals on it. [NB: a Roman settlement here is said to date from the mid-1st century; Fernández Palacios (ibid.) dates the altar in the late 1st or early 2nd century A.D. -- it is quite likely that the excavations that led to the 1906 publications on this altar took place some years earlier, in the 18th century].