History

CIUTADELLA HISTORY

Historical review of Ciutadella de Menorca

Ciutadella has its historical origins, like other urban centres on the island, in the Carthaginians who populated it for centuries; so much so that, with the Phoenician presence, the populated area of the west was known by the name of Jamma. After the reconquest carried out by Alfonso the Liberal in the year 1287, the town awoke from the lethargy of the centuries and had a sustained development for almost three centuries, which situates it as one of the preferred urban centres for the construction of the great works that were being built in Menorca at that time: the palaces of the nobility and the churches, ensuring the strength of the town more and more. Due to the siege and subsequent destruction of the city at the hands of the Turkish hordes that roamed the Mediterranean in the year 1558, it took almost a century to rebuild it, but the effort to recover it and to build the walled enclosure that is known today as Contramurada, so as not to be invaded again by the corsairs, delayed it, and it never again had the splendour of previous centuries. However, within the walled enclosure, the construction of small palaces is very marked, and today they can be seen in a very good state of conservation, which is why it is often called the Florence of the Mediterranean. The great personality of the building, with its medieval appearance, invites one to walk through it in a leisurely way to be able to appreciate in full detail the large number of architectural monuments of these centuries. With the English domination, it lost its status as capital. Surely because of the suspicion of the nobles regarding a new conquest, the English administrators saw the transfer of the administration to the other end of the island with good eyes, where there is also a port that they saw as having greater possibilities for their trade, ceasing to be the capital in the year 1722, while keeping the bishopric as the highest ecclesiastical authority that never wanted to join the transfer of the administrative fueros (charters), thus lasting to the present day. With the new administrative situation, the city would stagnate for the next 150 years until it began its reactivation with the demolition of the wall in the year 1873, which restricted it like a corset, and the appearance of new neighbourhoods and urban areas further away from the old town began. To this new resurgence was added the jewellery industry in the 18th century and the footwear industry in the 19th, which gave new splendour and reactivated the economy with a large number of small industries, which became stronger over the years, but which have begun a marked decline and are losing power to the modern strength of the 'smokeless industry', as tourism is called, giving way to new activities and, above all, to the change in the physiognomy of the district with the appearance of new urban centres somewhat further away from the port, which was the engine of the primitive human settlement, looking for other coastal areas.