Reccopolis ( es, link=no, Recópolis; la, Reccopolis), located near the tiny modern village of

Zorita de los Canes Zorita de los Canes is a municipality located in the province of Guadalajara, Castile-La Mancha, Spain. According to the 2004 census ( INE), the municipality has a population of 98 inhabitants. There is a castle located in the municipality. The ...

in the

province of Guadalajara Guadalajara () is a province of Spain, belonging to the autonomous community of Castilla–La Mancha. As of 2013 it had a population of 257,723 people. The population of the province has grown in the last 10 years. It is located in the centre of ...

, Castile-La Mancha, Spain, is an archaeological site of one of at least four cities founded in

Hispania Hispania ( la, Hispānia , ; nearly identically pronounced in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Italian) was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula and its provinces. Under the Roman Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hisp ...

by the

Visigoths The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is ...

. It is one of only two cities in Western Europe known to have been founded between the fifth and eighth centuries.

Historical information

Reccopolis was founded in the year 578. The date is given in chronicle of

John of Biclaro John of Biclaro, Biclar, or Biclarum (''c.'' 540 – after 621), also ''Iohannes Biclarensis'', was a Visigoth chronicler. He was born in Lusitania, in the city of ''Scallabis'' (modern Santarém in Portugal). He was also bishop of Girona. Earl ...

Luivigildus rex extinctis undique tyrannis, et pervasoribus Hispaniae superatis sortitus requiem propiam cum plebe resedit civitatem in Celtiberia ex nomine filii condidit, quae Recopolis nuncupatur: quam miro opere et in moenibus et suburbanis adornans privilegia populo novae Urbis instituit.

A cache of coins was discovered in the city's palace, fixing the date of construction between 580–83. Coin variety indicated cultural reach, with gold coins of the

Merovingian The Merovingian dynasty () was the ruling family of the Franks from the middle of the 5th century until 751. They first appear as "Kings of the Franks" in the Roman army of northern Gaul. By 509 they had united all the Franks and northern Gauli ...

series, Suevic coins from Galicia and of

Justinian II Justinian II ( la, Iustinianus; gr, Ἰουστινιανός, Ioustinianós; 668/69 – 4 November 711), nicknamed "the Slit-Nosed" ( la, Rhinotmetus; gr, ὁ Ῥινότμητος, ho Rhinótmētos), was the last Eastern Roman emperor of the ...

, as well as from Visigothic Hispania itself. Reccopolis had an active

mint MiNT is Now TOS (MiNT) is a free software alternative operating system kernel for the Atari ST system and its successors. It is a multi-tasking alternative to TOS and MagiC. Together with the free system components fVDI device drivers, XaA ...

, coins from which have been found dating to the reign of Wittiza, in the early eighth century. The city was named by the Visigothic king

Liuvigild Liuvigild, Leuvigild, Leovigild, or ''Leovigildo'' (Spanish and Portuguese), ( 519 – 586) was a Visigothic King of Hispania and Septimania from 568 to 586. Known for his Codex Revisus or Code of Leovigild, a law allowing equal rights between the ...

to honor his son Reccared I and to serve as Reccared's seat as co-king in the Visigothic province of

Celtiberia The Celtiberians were a group of Celts and Celticized peoples inhabiting an area in the central-northeastern Iberian Peninsula during the final centuries BCE. They were explicitly mentioned as being Celts by several classic authors (e.g. Strab ...

, to the west of

Carpetania Carpetania was an ancient region of what is today Spain, located between the Sierra de Guadarrama, the mountains of Toledo, the river Guadiana and the mountain range of Alcaraz, including approximately, the present independent communities of Madri ...

, where the main capital, Toledo, lay. As a post-Roman royal foundation the city's only European rival in the sixth century was

Ravenna Ravenna ( , , also ; rgn, Ravèna) is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. It was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 408 until its collapse in 476. It then served as the ca ...

. In the eighth century the Visigoths at Reccopolis welcomed Muslim over-lordship in return for Muslim protection. The

Moors The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a distinct or ...

conserved the city as ''Madinät Raqquba'' and though they reused building materials to construct a fortification on a hill facing the city, the city declined and was burned, looted, razed, and incrementally abandoned in the tenth century. It lay forgotten until the twentieth century. Today Reccopolis is a large field of ruins in the ''Cerro de la Olíva''. There are plans to protect the partially excavated site as ''Parque Arqueológico Recópolis''. In 2007, the Museo Arqueológico Regional in '' Alcalá de Henares'' mounted an exhibition called "Recópolis: un paseo por la ciudad Visigoda" and published an accompanying catalogue.

Design

Archaeological excavations at Reccopolis have revealed traces of city walls with towers every thirty metres, an aqueduct,Martínez Jiménez, J. 2015. A preliminary study of the aqueduct of Reccopolis. ''Oxford Journal of Archaeology'', 34(3), pp. 301–20. commercial and residential quarters covering 30 hectares, several markets, and a mint. Its urban core was centered on a palace with administrative as well as royal functions, connected with a palatine chapel, an arrangement that has Byzantine parallels. On the western wall, a single entrance gate provided access. Within this a second gate formed an entrance to an "upper city" of the palace compound and its attached chapel. The "lower city" outside contained lodgings for the ordinary citizens, commercial districts and a barracks. The palace was two stories tall. The lower story was a single space, perhaps a

granary A granary is a storehouse or room in a barn for threshed grain or animal feed. Ancient or primitive granaries are most often made of pottery. Granaries are often built above the ground to keep the stored food away from mice and other animals ...

, with column bases supporting the story above. Flooring remnants indicate the second story may have been the '' piano nobile''. The roofs were tiled, as they had been in Roman times. The palace chapel is possibly the last of the Visigothic Arian churches, but it was overlaid by the Romanesque hermitage of Nuestra Señora de Recatel, which was constructed on the ruined site. It was of

basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's Forum (Roman), forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building ...

construction, with a central

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

separated by solid walls from the flanking naves. These exited into the

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building wi ...

, but did not communicate directly with the nave. Its hemispherical

apse In architecture, an apse (plural apses; from Latin 'arch, vault' from Ancient Greek 'arch'; sometimes written apsis, plural apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an '' exedra''. ...

was rectangular in outer appearance. A deep

narthex The narthex is an architectural element typical of early Christian and Byzantine basilicas and churches consisting of the entrance or lobby area, located at the west end of the nave, opposite the church's main altar. Traditionally the narthex ...

was entered by a single central door.

References

External links

*
Recópolis
{{DEFAULTSORT:Recopolis Visigothic archaeological sites in Spain Gothic cities and towns Populated places established in the 6th century Former populated places in Spain 578 establishments 6th century in the Visigothic Kingdom 7th century in the Visigothic Kingdom 8th century in the Visigothic Kingdom 8th century in Al-Andalus 9th-century disestablishments in Europe Archaeological sites in Castilla–La Mancha Buildings and structures in the Province of Guadalajara