Arnedo is the third largest town in

La Rioja La Rioja () is an autonomous community and province in Spain, in the north of the Iberian Peninsula. Its capital is Logroño. Other cities and towns in the province include Calahorra, Arnedo, Alfaro, Haro, Santo Domingo de la Calzada, an ...

, Spain. It is located near Calahorra, and has a population of about 15,000 people. Its economy is based on the

shoe A shoe is an item of footwear intended to protect and comfort the human foot. They are often worn with a sock. Shoes are also used as an item of decoration and fashion. The design of shoes has varied enormously through time and from cultur ...

industry.

History

The area of Arnedo has been inhabited as early as the

Neolithic Age The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...

. In pre-Roman times it was known as Sadacia or Sidacia, while the current name derives from the Latin ''Arenetum'' ("Place of sand"); the Romans, who arrived here in the 2nd century BC replacing the

Celtiberians The Celtiberians were a group of Celts and Celticized peoples inhabiting an area in the central-northeastern Iberian Peninsula during the final centuries BCE. They were explicitly mentioned as being Celts by several classic authors (e.g. Strab ...

, built here a fortification to defend the hill, which commanded an important communication hub. Of the Visigothic Age are remains of a 6th-century cave-church. The

Moors The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a distinc ...

conquered Arnedo in the 8th century AD and made it the capital of one of the 26 provinces in which they divided Iberia. The town was conquered by the Christian king Sancho I of Pamplona in 908-909.

Main sights

* Ruins of the castle * Church of St. Thomas * Church of St. Cosmas and Damian, housing a Baroque high altar * Church of St. Eulalia * Monastery of ''Nuestra Señora de Vico'', situated some 4 km outside the city * Gate of ''Nuestra Señora de la Nieves'' * Museum of Shoes

Politics

Notable people

* Musa ibn Musa al-Qasawi * Leopoldo Alas Mínguez * Jesús Ángel Solana

Twin towns

* Andosilla, Spain *

Parthenay Parthenay () is an ancient fortified town and ''commune'' in the Deux-Sèvres department of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in western France. It is sited on a rocky spur that is surrounded on two sides by the River Thouet, and is the su ...

, France * Elda, Spain *

Farsia Farsia (also known as Al Farciya or El Farcya ), is an isolated village within the Western Sahara Western Sahara ( '; ; ) is a disputed territory on the northwest coast and in the Maghreb region of North and West Africa. About 20% of ...

, Western Sahara

References