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History of Seville is a fascinating one. Seville's history is closely linked to the history of the river Guadalquivir because the city has been both a river port and bridge between the Atlantic Ocean and the hinterland of Andalusia from its initial days. Seville is the artistic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain, watered by the river Guadalquivir. It is the capital of Andalusia and of the province of Sevilla. Population of the metropolitan area was 1,317,098 as of 2005 making Seville as the fourth-largest metropolitan area of Spain. Though Greeks and Romans repeated a founding myth connected with Heracles' visit to the Hesperides, this historical site was occupied by the Tartessos in the 8th or 9th century BCE. Later, it became a trading colony occupied by the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians who destroyed the city in 216 BCE. In 206 BCE, Scipio Africanus founded Italica nearby in order to settle his wounded soldiers and to begin the reconstruction of Hispalis. It was made a colony by Julius Caesar and it featured, in Strabo's time, among the first cities of Turdetania, next after Corduba and Gades. The city gradually started gaining status and dignity during the time of Ptolemy.
It acquired the title of metropolis and under the Vandals and Goths, it ranked above Corduba and became the capital of Southern Spain. In the Roman Empire it was the seat of a judicial district and held the titles of Julia Romula and Colonia Romulensis. The architecture of the older parts of the city reflects the centuries of Moorish control of the city beginning in 711. Seville, as one of the taifa principalities, enjoyed a brief independence from 1023 to 1091 when it was the seat of the Abbadids while the Caliphate of Cordoba collapsed. After that, Seville fell to the Reconquista of Ferdinand III of Castile in 1248. Seville was governed from Cordoba and it retained strategic importance as a port.
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