{"id":4878,"date":"2020-11-05T18:25:13","date_gmt":"2020-11-05T17:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/?p=4878"},"modified":"2020-11-06T10:19:54","modified_gmt":"2020-11-06T09:19:54","slug":"the-roman-seville-or-hispalis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toursevilla.com\/en\/the-roman-seville-or-hispalis\/","title":{"rendered":"History of Seville. Chapter 1. Hispalis, the Roman Seville"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
We are going to talk about Roman Seville, or rather we should say Roman Hispalis, since this was the name our city had two thousand years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seville however was not founded by the Romans but is earlier. It seems that it dates back to Phoenician times, that is, to the 7th century BC. The Phoenicians or Canaanites came from the Middle East, they were a merchant people that had founded colonies and cities throughout the Mediterranean. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and after founding the three thousand-year-old Gades (or Gadir) they arrived at the place where Seville would settle and they would call it Ispal. This was a strategic area due to the access to the copper and silver mines of the southwest of the Peninsula, in addition to its agricultural wealth and finally it was located on the banks of a large river, in an estuary very close to the coast, even more than it is now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to tradition, it was the God Hercules who founded the city of Seville, he came chasing the Phoenician goddess Astarte along the Guadalquivir River. Astarte turned right and founded the quarter of Triana, Hercules turned right and founded Hispalis (Seville).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the city became more important from the second century BC as a Roman foundation as a result of the battle of Ilipa Magna, now Alcal\u00e1 del R\u00edo. According to tradition, Julius Caesar was in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, then called Betica, and he was the one who made the first wall of Seville. <\/p>\n\n\n\n