Qualla: Lucentum

Lucentum: Introduction

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. The tall apartment blocks of the Albufereta neighbourhood crowd right up to the fence, and behind it, on a low rise called El Tossal de Manises, lie the bones of the city that came before Alicante. This is Lucentum, and its story runs backward through almost every people who ever wanted this coast. Romans laid streets and baths here. Carthaginians raised a fortress before them. The Greeks who traded along the shore knew the pale bluff above the lagoon as Akra Leuke, the White Citadel - and it is that same bright rock, softened through Latin into Lucentum, that eventually became the name Alicante.

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Lucentum: The White Citadel

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. The ancient historian Diodorus credited the settlement's founding to Hamilcar Barca, the Carthaginian general and father of Hannibal. To the Greeks it was the White Promontory; the Romans, following the same sense, would call it the bright place. Perched between the Iberian inter...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Lucentum: Rome's Bright Town

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joanbanjo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Lucentum reached its height between the first century BC and the first century AD, and it is Rome's hand that shows most plainly in what survives. The Romans built over the Iberian town, leaving little of it but the walls, and laid out a proper city: a forum, public baths, a defe...

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Image: Joanbanjo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lucentum: Buried and Rediscovered

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zarateman, CC0. For a long time no one was sure where the ancient city had stood. The first real clue came in 1780, when Antonio Valcarcel Pio de Saboya, the Count of Lumiares, argued that the ruins he had been digging at Tossal de Manises were Lucentum itself - against the settled opinion that ...

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Image: Zarateman | CC0

Lucentum: The Woman Who Saved It

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zarateman, CC0. By the middle of the twentieth century the ruins occupied prime coastal land, with a fine view over the old lagoon and bay - which made them a target for the developers reshaping the Costa Blanca. The site might have disappeared entirely but for the people who fought to keep it, ...

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Image: Zarateman | CC0