Cartagena - Calle Mayor

The Iberian predecessor settlement of Cartagena was in 227 BC. naval and military base, de facto the capital of the Carthaginians on the Iberian Peninsula. From here Hannibal set off for Italy at the beginning of the Second Punic War (218 BC). The Romans conquered the city in 209 BC. BC and called it Carthago Nova. Carthago Nova was the most important silver mining region of the Roman Empire. According to Polybius, 40,000 people worked in the silver mines here.

It was destroyed by the Vandals in 425, was probably Visigothic in 475, and Byzantine in 554. Under the name Carthago Spartaria, it was the capital of the Eastern Roman province of Spania before it became Visigoth again in 625. From 711, after the fall of the Visigothic Empire, it became part of the Todmir Empire, and in 756 it became part of the Emirate of Córdoba. Conquered by King James I (Jaime el Conquistador) in 1269, it came to Aragon in the course of the Christian Reconquista, now called Cartagena.

The "Calle Mayor" is the old main street near the port. There are many restaurants and bars but also interesting buildings.