Send Gift Baskets to Valencia, Spain

Valencia’s history began 2100 years ago when it was founded as a Roman colony named Valentia Edetanorum by the river Turia in the province of Edetania on the site of an old Iberian town. During the Roman consul, Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus’ administration in 138 BC, about 2,000 veteran soldiers were transferred to Valentia. Valentia was situated on a river island that would later cross the Via Augusta in a strategic location near the sea. By the middle of the 1st century, Valentia was experiencing rapid urban growth with many colonists from Italy. Pompey destroyed Valentia in 75 B.C. It was rebuilt about fifty years later with large infrastructure projects.

Following the arrival of the first waves of Germanic invaders and the demise of the Roman imperial administration in Hispania, the church assumed control of the city. The Visigoths stationed military contingents there in 625. Valencia was an episcopal see of the Catholic Church during Visigothic times. In 714 AD, the city surrendered without resistance to the Muslim Berbers and Arabs, establishing Islamic culture. The trading center of Valencia, then known as Balansiyya, prospered from the 10th century onward. As part of a combined Christian and Muslim army, El Cid entered Taifa of Valencia in 1092 and conquered it in 1094. His reign lasted five years until he died defending the city from the Almoravids during a siege. In 1102, the Almoravids retook the city from the Christians. As a result of James I of Aragon’s siege and forced surrender of Valencia in 1238, the city was destroyed.

A series of wars and riots followed the Black Death in 1348, which devastated the city. In what became known as the Valencian Golden Age, culture and the arts flourished during the 15th century due to economic expansion. Valencia became one of the most influential cities in the Mediterranean in the 15th and 16th centuries after it had the first printing press on the Iberian Peninsula.