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Cities founded by the Visigoths in the Iberian Peninsula.
The cities founded by the Visigoths in the Iberian Peninsula, the only newly built cities in Western Europe from the 5th to the 8th centuries
In the year 507 the pressure of the Franks caused the Visigoths, who until then had occupied and controlled the south of Gaul and a good part of the north of the Iberian Peninsula, to move to Hispania en masse. That year is taken as the year of the foundation of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo, which would not be consolidated until the reign of Leovigild (568-586) with the incorporation of the Swabian kingdom of Galicia and the northern Cantabrian strip.
The Visigothic domination of the peninsula would last 196 years, until the Muslim conquest began in 711. During all this time it had to face the Merovingian threat from the northeast and the Byzantine threat from the Mediterranean coast.
The almost permanent state of war prevented the Visigoths from stopping in the foundation of new cities, with only a few exceptions (only one is confirmed and the others are doubtful). Even so, the Visigoths will be the only founders of new cities in Western Europe between the 5th and 8th centuries.
Reccopolis
In 578 Leovigild leads the last Arian kingdom that emerged from the decomposition of the Western Roman Empire. To assert his independence against the Merovingians (whom he had just defeated) and Byzantines, he decided to adopt Roman imperial attributes: minting coins with his name and founding cities.
Recopolis
It was in this context that he promoted the creation of a new city on the Cerro de la Oliva (1.5 kilometers from Zorita de los Canes in Guadalajara), dominating a large agricultural plain along the course of the Tagus River and the Altomira mountain range.
He names it Reccopolis (in Latin, Recópolis in current Spanish), without researchers agreeing on whether the etymology comes from his son Recaredo or from rexopolis (city of the king). In it he tries to imitate the urban layout of Constantinople, providing it with walls with monumental gates, aqueducts, churches and its own royal palace, which extend along its 33 hectares of surface.
The Muslim occupation did not modify the general urban structure, but by the 9th century it was abandoned in favor of Zorita de los Canes, for whose new buildings Reccopolis was used as a quarry. After a brief Christian repopulation between the end of the 11th century and the beginning of the 15th century, the city was definitively abandoned.
The Iberian Peninsula in the year 586
Until it was discovered in 1893 by the archaeologist Juan Catalina García López. The first systematic excavations would have to wait until 1945, by Juan Cabré. Remains of towers were found every 30 meters on the walls, markets and commercial and residential neighborhoods, and even the building where coins were minted. The palace, located in the upper part, had two floors and was connected to a palatine chapel in the Byzantine style. As for the aqueduct, it is the only one discovered so far from the Visigothic period.
Excavations at Reccopolis continue, and the site is included in the Archaeological Park, which can be visited and has a museum and interpretation center.
Victoriacum
Leovigild himself founded a new city three years later, in 581, after his victory over the Vascons. John of Biclaro recounts it in his Chronicon written around 589:
...Anno V Tiberii, qui est Leovegildi XIII annus [...] Leovegildus rex partem Vasconiae occupat et civitatem, quae Victoriacum nuncupatur, condidit [...] (Fifth year of Tiberius and thirteenth of Leovigild [581?] King Leovigild occupies part of Vasconia and founds the city which is called Victoriacum).
John of Biclarus was a Gothic priest born in what is now Santarem (Portugal), who trained in Constantinople and on his return was exiled by Leovigild to Barcino (Barcelona). Around 585 he was pardoned by the king and named bishop of Gerunda (Gerona).
Vitoria in the seventeenth century, by Bartolomé Benito de Casas
The problem is that researchers do not agree on the location of this city. Some think that, given the similarities of the name, it could be the Alava capital of Vitoria. Others identify it with the site of Iruña-Veleia, 10 kilometers west of Vitoria, and of Roman origin. No Visigoth remains have been found in the province of Alava that could have been associated with this city of Victoriacum, so the debate continues only in etymological terms.
However, it is curious that, when Sancho VI of Navarre founded the city of Vitoria in 1181 in the place formerly called Gasteiz, he points out in the town charter granted:
Ego Sancius, Dei gracia rex Navarrae, facio hanc cartam confirmationis et roborationis vobis omnibus populatoribus meis de Nova Victoria tam presentibus quam futuris [...] dono vobis ipsam villam que dicitur Nova Victoria [...].
Calling the city Nueva Vitoria and not just Vitoria. Which possibly has nothing to do with the existence of Leovigild's Victoriacum, but who knows.
Oligicus / Ologite
In February of the year 621 the Visigothic king Sisebuto died in strange circumstances in Toledo being succeeded by his son Recaredo II, barely a child, who would not live beyond the month of April of the same year. This led to the rise to the throne of his uncle, the general Suintila.
View of Olite
That same year Suintila defeated the Vascones, who were threatening the Tarraconense, and made among them numerous prisoners and hostages. With them as labor he founded and built a new city, as Isidore of Seville tells in his Historia de regibus gothorum. He called it Oligicus or Ologite (the current Olite in Navarra, located 42 kilometers south of Pamplona). The objective was to establish a line of fortified positions, next to Vitoria, against the Vascones.
However, although Isidore's assertion was taken for granted for many centuries, archaeological excavations in Olite brought to light remains of Roman walls and numerous epigraphic finds that would prove that the city is much older.
In 2011 an inscription appeared in Sansomain (15 kilometers from Olite), dated by Professor Javier Velaza, from the University of Barcelona, in the 12th century. The inscription, badly damaged, reads [...]eologite[...]eon per[...]svhinthilanem Regem (which Velaza translated as Olite nuevo por el rey Suintila).
Baiyara
In the Kitab al-Rawd al-Mitar (The Book of the Fragrant Garden), a gazetteer of Al-Andalus written between the 13th and 15th centuries, it is mentioned that the Muslim city of Baiyara was founded by Recaredo:
Bayyara, medina of al-Andalus near Porcuna, from which ten miles separate it, its port on the Rio Grande is provided with a masonry wall (al-Rasif). The great road that leaves the Narbonne Gate to reach the Gate of Cordoba passed through its gate. The arch of this gate still exists without the slightest crack and its height above the ground is such that a horseman could reach its peak with the tip of his spear. This medina was built by Recaredo, son of Leovigildo, king of the Goths...
View of Montoro
The same is stated by Isidoro of Seville in book XV of his Etymologies. The location of this city is unknown because there is no archaeological evidence, although it is usually associated with the current Cordovan village of Montoro (the ancient Roman Epora). In fact, one theory states that the castle of Montoro was built using the ruins of Baiyara as a quarry. And that the toponym Montoro would derive from Mon(te Go)thorum, the Mount of the Goths.
Sources
Recopolis and the city in the Visigothic period (L. Olmo Enciso) / The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples (Herwig Wolfram) / Visigothic Spain 409-711 (Roger Collins) / Recopolis Archaeological Park (official website) / Archaeological Routes in Navarra / Nabarralde / Chronicle of Juan, abbot of the monastery of Biclaro / History of Álava (Antonio Rivera) / Hispanomuslim Cities (Leopoldo Torres Balbás) / Studies of Andalusian History and toponymy: Montoro
https://www.labrujulaverde.com/2019/...KzScC6kdY0lAAQ
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Originally Posted by GreentheViper
Latin America
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