The history of Cadiz is that of a city marked by its strategic military and commercial position, on the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. This Phoenician settlement was the foundation of the Tyrians, one of the oldest in the West, and a city dedicated to the sea and trade. Hannibal left it to conquer Italy and Julius Caesar himself granted the Roman Senate the title of Civitas Federata. The city reached great prosperity in Roman times, building an amphitheater, an aqueduct, and soon became the second most populated city in the Empire. During this period, more than 500 equites (a caste of prominent citizens) lived in the city, rivaling Padua and Rome itself.



In the 3rd century crisis of the Roman Empire, the very fall and conquest of the Visigoths, the city went into a sharp decline, entering the Middle Ages, losing its capital and its commercial and strategic importance. The collapse of the commercial network of the Empire, necessary for Guedes and any important city, caused most of the problems. The old style of large open cities gradually gave way to a smaller walled city, which was common in the Middle Ages. Due to financial necessity, many of these former Gardez residents were forced to give up their basic rights to obtain the protection of large landowners and travel to inland towns. For example Asido Caesarina Augusta.



The city was conquered by the Byzantines in 522, reconquered by the Visigoths in 620 and conquered by the army of Tariq ibn Ziad at the Battle of Guadalet in 711. During this period, the statue of Hercules was removed from the Temple of Hercules.



The reconquest of Cadiz was included in the reconquest of the Guadalquivir (1243-1262), it was added to the Crown of Castile in 1264. Until the reconquest of the Royal Shipyards of the Crown of Castile and the beginning of the Age of Discoveries, the city reemerged with great impetus.



Many discoverers such as Christopher Columbus or Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Conquistadors left the port during the colonial era, which enriched the port and allowed the establishment of a bourgeois, liberal and revolutionary Cadiz society centuries later. A city with a commercial monopoly with the United States, it is the seat of the Casa de Contratación and the Fleet of the Indies, which was the scene of innumerable naval battles and the cradle of the first Spanish constitution.



After the war of independence and the collapse after the loss of Cuba, the city did not stop growing, although it did not recover its national importance.