Sigüenza

Sister cities

• Vila Viçosa
• Sainte-Livrade-sur-Lot

History

The site of the ancient ('dominating over the valley') of the Celtiberian Arevaci, now called ('old town'), is half a league distant from the present Sigüenza. Livy mentions the town in his discussion of the wars of Cato the Elder with the Celtiberians. The city fell under Roman, Visigothic, Moorish and Castilian rule. Around 1123 it was taken by Bernard of Agen, its first bishop. Sigüenza played a large part in the civil wars of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The fortress palace of the bishops, originally an earlier Moorish qasbah, was captured in 1297 by the partisans of the Infantes de la Cerda, and in 1355 it was the prison of Blanche of Bourbon, consort of Peter of Castile. In 1465 Diego López of Madrid, having usurped the miter, fortified himself there. The last bishop-lord, known as the "mason-bishop", built a neighborhood below the level of the old town in a Neo-Classical style, before renouncing the temporal lordship. During the Spanish Civil War, the Francoist Civil Guard fortified the upper castle, while the Republican forces took to the lower cathedral. After the war, the city limits have increased with the incorporation of 28 (villages). A Jewish community once existed in Sigüenza from 1124-1492 (1124 was the first written documentation, but the presence of Jews most likely already existed). Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros learned Hebrew during his stay in Sigüenza.