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August 2003
Valencia Province - Sagunto and Elche
David Aaronson2005-09-28 21:07:05
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Valencia province covers the southeast coast of Spain and contains many major tourist attractions like Peniscola, Benidorm, Alicante and Denia. We actually didn't manage to go to any of these. Instead we spent time in the towns of Sagunto and Elche which we group together here because they're both in Valencia province. This incidentally is the beach in the town of Vinaros, about an hour or so north of Valencia (city) (1). Just about any road along the coast of Valencia is likely to be scenic and bound to pass some nice beaches.
We spent our second morning and afternoon in Spain in the town of Sagunto which is a short 15 miles (25 km) north of Valencia. It was not part of our original plan but when we passed it on the way into Valencia the previous day we were so impressed with the series of castles sprawled across the hillside above it that we decided to go back and visit it. On a linguistic note, Sagunto is the Spanish name for the town, Sagunt is the Valenciano name. We've chosen to use Sagunto because that's what the maps we got at the tourist office in town use. This picture shows nearly the entire town, the cathedral in the center and the hills just to the west of Sagunto (2).
So here are some random bits of castle stretching off into the distance (3). The Roman forum occupied approximately the spot where David is standing, the other visible walls were built somewhere between Rome and Carthage in the 3rd century BC and the 19th century AD during the Spanish succession wars.
In 219 BC Carthage destroyed what existed of Sagunto and started the Second Punic War with Rome. Between 400 and 600 AD, Sagunto was invaded to varying degrees of success by Alans, Vandals, Visigoths, and Byzantines. In the 8th century the Arabs took over until Jaime I took it back for the Christian side in the 13th century. A few more wars between Aragon and Valencia and then some modern Spanish wars and this
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See photographs from:
Spain Gallery
