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Xàtiva is a town of eastern Spain, in the province of Valencia, on the right bank of the river Albaida and at the junction of the Valencia–Murcia and Valencia Albacete railways. Xàtiva is built on the margin of a fertile and beautiful plain, and on the southern slopes of the Monte Bernisa, a hill with two peaks, each surmounted by a Castle of Játiva. With its numerous fountains, and spacious avenues shaded with elms or cypresses, the town has a clean and attractive appearance. Its collegiate church, dating from 1414, but rebuilt about a century later in the Renaissance style, was formerly a cathedral, and is the chief among many churches and convents. The town-hall and a church on the castle hill are partly constructed of inscribed Roman masonry, and several houses date from the Moorish period. There is a brisk local trade in grain, fruit, wine, olive oil and rice. The leading football club is CD Olimpic Xàtiva The city was first named after Umran Samer Xativa (Jativa being an alternate spelling), a Lebanese immigrant who came to work with gold and sell his fabrics, thus creating the huge Lebanese influence in the town, thus taking his name.
Xàtiva (Saetabis) was famous in Roman times for its silk fabrics, mentioned by the Latin poet Ovid. Xàtiva is also known as an early European center of paper manufacture. In the twelfth century, Arabs brought the technology to manufacture paper to Xativa.
Birthplace of two popes, Callixtus III and Alexander VI, as well as the painter José Ribera spagnoletto, it suffered a dark moment in its history at the hands of Philip V of Spain, who, after his victory in the Battle of Almansa in the War of the Spanish Succession, ordered the city to be burned, changing its name to San Felipe. In memory of the insult, the portrait of the monarch hangs upside down in the local museum of L'Almodí. [1]
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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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