A rich coastal city of eastern Iberia, capital of a taifa kingdom, famously conquered by El Cid in 1094 and permanently reconquered by James I of Aragon in 1238.
Valencia, the Roman Valentia and the Arabic Balansiya, stood amid the fertile irrigated plain of the huerta on the eastern Mediterranean coast. Under Muslim rule it grew into a rich and populous city and the capital of one of the taifa kingdoms.
Its wealth made it a prize fought over by Christian and Muslim powers alike. El Cid's conquest of the city in 1094 and its final reconquest by James I of Aragon in 1238 are among the landmark events of the eastern Reconquista.
Valencia passed repeatedly between rulers: taifa kings, El Cid's brief Christian lordship of 1094–1102, the Almoravids and then the Almohads, before James I of Aragon took it for good in 1238 and made it the capital of a new Kingdom of Valencia within the Crown of Aragon.
Its medieval fabric survives in monuments such as the Serranos towers — one of the great gates of the Christian-era walls — the cathedral raised on the site of the main mosque, and the later Gothic Silk Exchange, testifying to the city's enduring importance.