Description : Córdoba or Cordova in English, is a city in Andalusia, southern Spain, and the capital of the province of Córdoba. It is the largest city in the province, 3rd largest in Andalusia, after Sevilla and Málaga, and the 12th largest in Spain. It was a Roman settlement, taken over by the Visigoths, followed by the Muslim conquests in the eighth century and later becoming the capital of the Caliphate of Córdoba. The city served as the capital in exile of the Umayyad Caliphate and other emirates. During these Muslim periods, Córdoba was transformed into a world leading center of education and learning, producing figures such as Averroes, Ibn Hazm, and Al-Zahrawi, and by the 10th century it had grown to be the second-largest city in Europe. It was conquered by the Kingdom of Castile through the Christian Reconquista in 1236. The first traces of human presence in the area are remains of a Neanderthal Man, dating to c. 42,000 to 35,000 BC. Pre-urban settlements around the mouth of the Guadalquivir river are known to have existed from the 8th century BC. The population gradually learned copper and silver metallurgy. The first historical mention of a settlement dates to the Carthaginian expansion across the Guadalquivir. Córdoba was conquered by the Romans in 206 BC. In 169 Roman consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus, grandson of Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who had governed both Hispania Ulterior and Hispania Citerior, respectively), founded a Latin colony alongside the pre-existing Iberian settlement. The date is contested; it could have been founded in 152. Between 143 and 141 BC the town was besieged by Viriatus. A Roman forum is known to have existed in the city in 113 BC. The famous Cordoba Treasure, with mixed local and Roman artistic traditions, was buried in the city at this time; it is now in the British Museum. Corduba became a Roman colonia with the name Colonia Patricia, between 46 and 45 BC. It was sacked by Caesar in 45 because of its fealty to Pompey, and resettled with veteran soldiers by Augustus. It became the capital of Baetica, with a forum and numerous temples, and was the main center of Roman intellectual life in Hispania Ulterior. The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger, his father, the orator Seneca the Elder, and his nephew, the poet Lucan came from Roman Cordoba. In the late Roman period, Corduba's bishop Hosius (Ossius) was the dominant figure of the western Church throughout the earlier 4th cent. Later, Corduba occupied an important place in the Provincia Hispaniae of the Byzantine Empire (552–572) and under the Visigoths, who conquered it in the late 6th century.
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