Llíria

The ground beneath Llíria has been occupied almost without interruption since the late Stone Age. The most significant early settlement was the Iberian city of Edeta-Lauro on the hill of San Miguel, capital of the Edetania region and a place of real political and economic weight. Its importance drew it into the Roman civil wars, and because it backed the republican faction, Sertorius's forces destroyed it. The survivors moved to the plain and built a new, fully Roman city in its place.

Under Islamic rule, the irrigation network around the town was improved, and Llíria served as the seat of a Cadi — a judge appointed directly by the caliph. In 1090 El Cid besieged the town but withdrew without taking it. King Jaume I captured it in 1238 and redistributed its lands to Christian settlers, pushing the Muslim population to nearby Benisanó.

After the War of Spanish Succession, Philip V created the Duchy of Llíria and awarded it to the Duke of Berwick, a son of King James II of England who had served as both Marshal of France and Captain General of Spain. Through marriage the title eventually passed to the House of Alba, where it remains today.

The hill of San Miguel holds the remains of Edeta, one of the largest Iberian cities of its time. Excavations have produced fine painted ceramics, and the site's chronology runs from its foundation until Sertorius destroyed it. At the northern edge of the old Roman town stand two Roman mausoleums built around the same period, considered among the finest examples of funerary architecture in the whole of Hispania, and designated as a protected cultural asset.

More significant still is the sanctuary and Roman baths complex at Mura, a site of 3,600 square metres that began to be excavated in the 1970s and is still being uncovered. Probably promoted by a local Roman official named Marcus Cornelius Nigrinus, it comprised a Greek-style temple within a trapezoidal enclosure and two full bathing complexes — one for men, one for women — built in the Pompeian style, each with changing rooms, cold, warm, and hot rooms, and their own furnaces. Much of the original floor and the hot-air ducting survive in good condition. After the Roman period, the complex was reused as a Christian monastery during the Byzantine and Visigothic eras before being abandoned entirely.

Some ten kilometres northwest of town, the Iberian settlement of Monravana preserves its entire circuit of walls across a site of six to eight thousand square metres, along with rows of houses and what appears to have been an industrial food-processing complex.