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Zaragosa - Francisco Goya monumentZaragoza
We had a connection problem in out train travel and wound up having to spend a night in Zaragoza with some friends. We only spent 1 night there but our friends spent 3 and had a great time.
Zaragoza is the culminant point in the valley of Ebro, Spain's most water-bearing river, in an impressive landscape with picturesque villages and very old traditions and popular customs. Zaragoza is one of the great monumental towns in Spain. It was founded some 2000 years ago, and Old-Iberians, Romans, Goths and Arabians equally left their heritage. Zaragoza as well includes important buildings of Spanish baroque.
Today the town is economically very active, and organizes several important international fairs.
Zaragoza was founded in the year 24 BC by the legions that had taken part in the Cantabrian Wars, in Augustus' time. The city took its name from the emperor Caesar Augustus and was an important city with 30,000 inhabitants as well as baths, sewers, a theatre (6,000 capacity), a market, temples, a port and a road network that connected it to other cities in the empire.
Zaragoza - like the rest of the country - fell under Moorish influence, in 714 and became Saraqusta, also known as Medina Albayda: "white city". Saraqusta became the capital of an important Taifa Kingdom, in the 11th century, when it became an international and cosmopolitan city for traders, and an important slave market.
In 1118 the king of Aragón, Alfonso I, retook Zaragoza back from the Moors and it became the new capital of the kingdom. The old main mosque of Saraqusta became a Romanesque cathedral, later Gothic and Mudéjar. In this cathedral, today called Seo, the kings of Aragón were crowned. The royal residence was the Aljafería, which under Pedro IV was enlarged and reformed (the king even had a zoo there
