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Visita romana
In 218 BC, on the occasion of the Second Punic War, a Roman army under Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio landed at the port of Empúries with the aim of blocking land access to the Carthaginian troops. This was the process that was to start the romanisation of the Iberian Peninsula.
In 195 BC, Marcus Porcius Cato set up a military camp at Empúries that was the embryo of the new city (the Roman city), created at the beginning of the 1st century BC. In the times of emperor Augustus, the Greek and Roman cities became one, physically and legally under the name of Municipium Emporiae (last quarter of the 1st century BC). As Gerunda (Girona), Barcino (Barcelona), Tarraco (Tarragona) and other Roman cities on the Peninsula became increasingly more important, so Emporiae gradually lost its importance. In ther second half of the 3rd century, the whole of the Roma city and the area of the Neapolis were abandoned, and the people settled in Sant Martí d'Empúries. This city was episcopal throughout the whole of the Late Antiquity period ans its inhabitants used the area of the north of the Neapolis as a cemetery, which is where we can find the remains of a funeral chapel.
After the invasion of the Moors and its recovery by the Franks (8th century) Empúries was the capital of the Carolingian county of Empúries until the 11th century, when the count moved the capital to Castelló. From that time, Empúries was inhabitated by a small group of fishermen who in the 16th century founded the town of l'Escala.