king Alfonso IX of León decided to create a bigger port nearby in the 13th century. The place he chose was an uninhabited place called Clunia, which later on evolved to Cruña and Coruña, and so (in English) to Corunna. The place name Clunia is believed to come from the Proto-Celtic root *klou̯ni (cf. Old Irish cluain), meaning meadow. However, the A Coruña tradition maintains that the "port" of Betanzos (which is a fluvial one, in a quite small river) was far too small for Roman warships to dock at, for example when Julius Caesar visited this area with "more than a hundred triremes". It is demonstrated that A Coruña was an important Roman site, as graveyards and other Roman remains have been found in the city centre, demonstrating that the site was inhabited in the Roman period, and was deserted only during the early Middle Ages due to Viking attacks, when its people moved inland to O Burgo (now Culleredo). The proponents of A Coruña also explain the different name as a change that occurred in the Middle Ages, and point out that the lighthouse, which was called "Pharum Brigantium", was erected in A Coruña, and is at least 25 km (or a day's walk) from Betanzos. Also in A Coruña there was the tribe of the Brigantes, in Betanzos the tribe of the Nemeti. Today almost all historians agree that Brigantia is A Coruña. Brigantia is not only A Coruña; today it is believed that Brigantia was located from A Coruña until A Laracha and Carballo in the Bergantiños region (Brigantes > Brigantinos > Bergantiños undoing the modification of medieval Galician). Gallery See also Roman architecture Roman engineering Roman technology List of Roman sites in Spain List of World Heritage Sites in Spain List of lighthouses in Spain References Specific references General references "Documentos para estudiar la Torre de Hércules" (in Spanish) Mareblucamogli.com Tower of Hercules from Spain.info Torre de Hércules (in English) from the Universidade da Coruña website Tower of Hercules Visitor Services and Interpretive Center (in English) External links Torre photo Official website Images of the Roman Tower of Hercules and futuristic visual legends Historical timeline of the Tower of Brigantia, from galicianflag.com Lighthouses completed in the 2nd century Towers completed in the 2nd century Lighthouses in Galicia (Spain) Buildings and structures in the Province of A Coruña World Heritage Sites in Spain Ancient Roman buildings