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SPAIN | Valencia, Spain Travel Guide
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
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Sagunto
Sagunto (Sagunt)
With crisp views of the irrigated Valencian farmlands, known as huertas, Sagunt is a town notable for playing a crucial role in Spanish history and with more than one interesting archeological site to show for it. As early as the fifth century BC, Iberians settled and fortified the hill overlooking the town, atop which is perched a ruined castle. In 219 BC Hannibal, commander of the Carthaginian Empire, laid siege to the town – which at the time was allied with Rome – for a period of eight months. Food supplies were cut and the noble townsfolk chose to die of starvation rather than surrender their home. All of the town’s inhabitants are said to have died, the last of which allegedly threw themselves atop massive bonfires in the penultimate days of the siege. The event spawned the Second Punic War, a devastating mess for the Carthiginians and a turning point for the victorious Romans, who would thereafter control the whole of the Iberian Peninsula. Saguntum, as it was then called by the Romans, came to serve as an important outpost of Hispania located on the heavily traveled Roman route, the Vía Augusta, which can still be seen today.
The first-century AD Teatro Romano ( 96 266 55 91, free admission), built into a hillside with great natural acoustics and declared a national monument in 1896, is today a controversial site. It was recently restored using modern materials and now serves as a venue for concerts, plays and the town’s annual theater festival, Sagunt a Escena.
The ruined Castle, site of the earliest Iberian town, stretches for almost a kilometer atop a serrated hill overlooking modern Sagunto. It occupies seven distinct fortified areas, each proof of a different period and culture that occupied Sagunto, from the Iberians to the Carthaginians, Romans, Moors and Christians.
In town, take a stroll through La Judería (Jewish Quarter), a quiet labyrinth of cool whitewashed houses, arches and narrow alleys and stroll around the other Roman ruins in town, including the Temple of Diana, from the fifth-sixth century BC, and the gateway to the third-century BC Roman Circus, long since vanished.
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