In the year 507, the pressure from the Franks led the Visigoths, who had until then occupied and controlled the southern Gaul and much of the northern Iberian Peninsula, to mass migrate to Hispania. That year is considered the founding year of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo, which would not be consolidated until the reign of Leovigild (568–586) with the incorporation of the Suebic Kingdom of Galicia and the northern Cantabrian strip.
The Visigothic rule of the peninsula would last for 196 years until the Muslim conquest began in 711. Throughout that time, they had to face the Merovingian threat from the northeast and the Byzantine threat along the Mediterranean coast.
The almost constant state of war prevented the Visigoths from stopping to found new cities, with only a few exceptions (only one is confirmed, and the others are doubtful). Nevertheless, the Visigoths would be the only founders of new cities in Western Europe between the 5th and 8th centuries.
Reccopolis
In the year 578, Leovigild led the last Arian kingdom that emerged from the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire. To assert independence from the Merovingians (whom he had just defeated) and the Byzantines, he decided to adopt Roman imperial attributes: minting coins with his name and founding cities.
In this context, he promoted the creation of a newly planned city on the Cerro de la Oliva (1.5 kilometers from Zorita de los Canes in Guadalajara), dominating a vast agricultural plain along the course of the Tagus River and the Altomira mountain range.
He named it Reccopolis (in Latin, Recópolis in modern Spanish), and researchers disagree on whether the etymology comes from his son Reccared or rexopolis (city of the king). He attempted to imitate the urban layout of Constantinople, providing it with walls with monumental gates, aqueducts, churches, and its own royal palace, spreading over its 33 hectares.
Muslim occupation did not alter the general urban structure, but by the 9th century, it was abandoned in favor of Zorita de los Canes, with Reccopolis being used as a quarry for its new buildings. After a brief Christian repopulation between the late 11th and early 15th centuries, the city would be definitively abandoned.
Until it was discovered in 1893 by archaeologist Juan Catalina García López. The first systematic excavations had to wait until 1945, led by Juan Cabré. Remains of towers every 30 meters on the walls, markets, commercial and residential districts, and even the building where coins were minted were found. The palace, located at the top, had two floors and was connected to a palatine chapel in Byzantine style. As for the aqueduct, it is the only one discovered from the Visigothic period.
Excavations at Reccopolis continue, and the site is included in the Archaeological Park that can be visited, featuring a museum and interpretation center.
Victoriacum
In 581, Leovigild would found a new city three years later after his victory over the Basques. Juan de 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 […]
… In the fifth year of Tiberius, which is the thirteenth year of Leovigild […] King Leovigild occupies part of Vasconia and founds the city called Victoriacum […].
Juan de Biclaro was a Gothic priest born in what is now Santarém (Portugal), educated in Constantinople, and upon his return, he was exiled by Leovigild to Barcino (Barcelona). Around 585, he was pardoned by the king and appointed bishop of Gerunda (Gerona).
The problem is that researchers do not agree on the location of that city. Some believe that, given the similarity of the name, it could be the capital of Álava, Vitoria. Others identify it with the Iruña-Veleia site, 10 kilometers west of Vitoria, and of Roman origin. No Visigothic remains associated with this city of Victoriacum have been found in the province of Álava, so the debate continues only in etymological terms.
However, it is interesting that when Sancho VI of Navarre founded the city of Vitoria in 1181 in the place formerly called Gasteiz, he stated in the population charter:
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 […]
I, Sancho, by the grace of God, king of Navarre, make this charter of confirmation and ratification to all my present and future settlers […] I give you the very town called Nueva (New) Vitoria […]
Referring to the city as Nueva Vitoria and not just Vitoria. This may possibly have nothing to do with the existence of Leovigild’s Victoriacum, but who knows.
Oligicus / Ologite
In February of the year 621, the Visigothic king Sisebut died under strange circumstances in Toledo, succeeded by his son Reccared II, just a child, who would not live beyond April of the same year. This led to the ascension to the throne of his uncle, the general Suintila.
That same year, Suintila defeated the Basques, who threatened the Tarraconensis, and took many prisoners and hostages among them. Using them as labor, he founded and built a new city, as Isidore of Seville recounts in his Historia de regibus gothorum (History of the Gothic Kings). He called it Oligicus or Ologite (modern Olite in Navarre, located 42 kilometers south of Pamplona). The goal was to establish a line of fortified positions, alongside Vitoria, against the Basques.
However, although Isidore’s statement was believed for many centuries, archaeological excavations in Olite revealed remains of Roman walls and numerous epigraphic findings proving that the city is much older.
In 2011, an inscription was found in Sansomain (15 kilometers from Olite), dated by Professor Javier Velaza of the University of Barcelona to the 12th century. The inscription, very damaged, says […]eologite[…]eon per[…]svhinthilanem Regem (which Velaza translated as New Olite by King Suintila).
Baiyara
In the Kitab al-Rawd al-Mitar (The Book of the Fragrant Garden), a geographical dictionary of Al-Andalus written between the 13th and 15th centuries, it is mentioned that the Muslim city of Baiyara had been founded by Reccared:
Bayyara, a city in Al-Andalus near Porcuna, from which it is separated by ten miles, its port on the Rio Grande is provided with a masonry wall (al-Rasif). The great road that leaves the Gate of Narbonne to reach the Gate of Cordoba passed by its gate. The arch of this gate still exists without the slightest crack, and its height above the ground is such that a rider could reach its summit with the tip of his lance. This city was built by Reccared, son of Leovigild, king of the Goths…
Isidore of Seville also asserts this in book XV of his Etymologies. The location of this city is unknown because there is no archaeological evidence, although it is often associated with the current Cordovan town of Montoro (the ancient Roman Epora). In fact, one theory suggests that the castle of Montoro was built using the ruins of Baiyara as a quarry. And that the name Montoro would derive from Mon(te Go)thorum, the Mountain of the Goths.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on January 10, 2019. Puedes leer la versión en español en Las ciudades fundadas por los visigodos en la Península Ibérica, las únicas de nueva planta en Europa Occidental entre los siglos V y VIII
Sources
L. Olmo Enciso, Recopolis y la ciudad en la época visigoda | Herwig Wolfram, The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples | Roger Collins, Visigothic Spain 409–711 | Parque Arqueológico de Recópolis (web oficial) | Rutas Arqueológicas en Navarra | Nabarralde | Crónica de Juan, abad del monasterio de Biclaro | Antonio Rivera, Historia de Álava | Leopoldo Torres Balbás, Ciudades Hispanomusulmanas | Estudios de Historia y toponimia andaluza: Montoro
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