Lucentum

Lucentum is the name of the Roman predecessor of the city of Alicante, Spain. Particularly, it refers to the archaeological site in which the remains of this ancient settlement lie, at a place known as El Tossal de Manises, in the neighborhood of Albufereta.

Ancient History

The settlement in the area of Alicante was called Akra Leuka (Greek Άκρα Λευκά, white cliff or similar) by the Greeks. Another possibility is that the name is of Iberian origin and consists of two parts, lug, "water" or "sea", and cant, "steep embankment" or "cliff", giving us the meaning "the cliff near the water/sea"; this is plausible in view of the topography of the site.(See Jacques R. Pauwels, Beneath the Dust of Time: A History of the Names of Peoples and Places, London, 2009.) As a Mediterranean and Iberian commercial center, it had trading contacts with Greece, Phoenicia, the southern Iberian city of Tartessos, absorbing some of their influences. This unique mixture gave rise to a culture called Contestani by Pliny the Elder and Strabo. Especially with the ascendance of Carthage, it imported a number of Carthaginian architectural features, traces of which are still present in the ruins.