Seville's Phoenician lowland became Andalusia's Guadalquivir capital
Seville, capital of Andalusia and its province on the lower Guadalquivir, held about 686,742 residents in 2024 and a metro near 1.5 million—Spain's fifth city—with a four-square-kilometer old town among Europe's largest historic cores. Roman Hispalis became Islamic Ishbiliyah after 711 and a taifa center after Córdoba's caliphate fell.
Legend credits Hercules, identified with the Phoenician god Melqart, with founding trading posts at Cádiz and Seville. The oldest core, near today's Cuesta del Rosario, goes back to the eighth century BC, when the site was an island in the Guadalquivir, and 1999 digs under the Alcázar's north wall found human traces from that era. Rome's Hispalis became a major market and industrial centre, while nearby Italica, birthplace of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian, stayed residential. Roman temple columns survive on Mármoles Street, and the city walls, first built under Julius Caesar, follow a later Moorish line.
The name travelled through several languages. Latin Hispalis became Arabic Išbīliya, with b replacing the missing p sound, yet officially the Umayyads called it Ḥimṣ al-Andalus after the Syrian city of Homs, whose army contingent settled here. Musa ibn Nusayr took the city in 712, but his son Abd al-Aziz had to retake it in 713, and it briefly served as the seat of the governor of al-Andalus until Córdoba replaced it in 716. Vikings seized it on 1 October 844 and stayed 40 days.
The city motto NO8DO is read as a rebus: the figure eight stands for madeja, a skein of wool, giving no me ha dejado, she has not abandoned me. Tradition says Alfonso X granted it to thank citizens who backed him against his rebellious son, later Sancho IV. The emblem appears on the flag, on manhole covers and on Columbus's tomb in the cathedral.
As the only river port in Spain, some 80 kilometres from the Atlantic, Seville ran the American trade through the Casa de Contratación and in the sixteenth century grew into one of Western Europe's largest cities. The cathedral, the Alcázar and the Archive of the Indies now share UNESCO World Heritage status, and July highs routinely exceed 35 °C.
Source: Seville
