Valencia was founded in the year 138 Before Christ, at the time there was a Roman consul named Junio Bruto, and he did so in order to settle discharged soldiers who received lands in the new city. The archaeology has brought to light evidences of the first settlement such as holes for cabin posts and tents, surely for a provisional refuge that eased the road to more solid buildings. Valencia quickly prospered and soon it began to mint its own money.

The city was destroyed in the year 75 before Christ in the course of a war between Pompeyo and Sertorio. During the Almoina digging, torn remains from several soldiers together with their weapons have been found, an evidence of what could have been a war skirmish, due to this event the place was really abandoned throughout at least fifty years.

Since the midst of Century One, Valencia had already recovered the lost trend and started a long stage of development, characterized by the urban growth, the influx of new settlers and the widening of the city by means of the construction of big public buildings such as the forum and the circus and the carrying out of important works for the city’s infra structure such as the fluvial port together with the present Torrens del Serrans or the waters’ supply made with an equipment of which people from Valencia would not enjoy anymore up to the midst of the Nineteenth Century.

During the second half of the Third Century, and at the same time to the rest of the empire, Valencia went through a stage of crisis that marked the beginning of a long period of decadence, term in which the city was shrinking its perimeters, whole neighbourhoods were uninhabited and infra-structures’ networks were abandoned. Since the midst of the Four Century, a Christian community in the city could have existed in the city shaped around the memory of Saint Vincent, a martyr here in the year 304.

In the 6th Century, Valencia experienced a sort of recovery, halting for a while the urban degradation and an important regional council was held. With the Byzantine invasion from the southeast of the peninsula in the year 554 the city gained a strategic importance, where military Visigoths contingents settled there and stated fortifying tasks of the old Roman Circus. After the expulsion of the Byzantines in the year 625 a dark stage began from which no documents exist and it seems to give evidence of a very poor urban life.