Portus Cale - Roman Conquest

Roman Conquest

During the Second Punic War, the Roman general Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus conquered the region and founded the Roman city Portus Cale in around 136 BC.

At the end of Brutus' campaigns, Rome controlled the territory between the Douro and Minho rivers plus probable extensions along the coast and in the interior. It was only under Augustus, however, at the end of the 1st century BC, that present north Portugal and Galicia were fully pacified and under Roman control. During the Roman occupation, the city developed as an important commercial port, primarily in the trade between Olisipo (the modern Lisbon) and Bracara Augusta (the modern Braga).

As the Roman Empire declined, these regions fell under Suebi dominion, between 410 and 584. These Germanic invaders settled mainly in the areas of Braga (Bracara Augusta), Porto (Portus Cale), Lugo (Lucus Augusti) and Astorga (Asturica Augusta). Bracara Augusta, capital of Roman Gallaecia, became the capital of the Suebi. As trade collapsed, Portus Cale went into decline.

Another Germanic people, the Visigoths, also invaded the Iberian Peninsula and would eventually conquer the Suebi kingdom in 584. The region around Cale became known by the Visigoths as Portucale. Portus Cale would fall under the Moorish Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 711.

In 868, Vímara Peres, a Christian warlord from Gallaecia and a vassal of the King of Asturias, Léon and Galicia, Alfonso III, was sent to reconquer and secure from the Moors the area from the Minho River to the Douro River, including the city of Portus Cale, and founded the First County of Portugal or Condado de Portucale. Portus Cale is thus the former name of current day Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia's riverside area, that would be used to name the whole region and, later, the country.