HOST CITY
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo
Toledo is a city and municipality located in central Spain, 70 km south of Madrid. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986 for its extensive cultural and monumental heritage as one of the former capitals of the Spanish Empire and place of coexistence of Christian, Jewish and Moorish cultures. Roman armies invaded Hispania in 218 BC and used it as a training ground for officers and as a proving ground for tactics during campaigns against the Carthaginians, the Iberians, the Lusitanians, the Gallaecians and other Celts. It was not until 19 BC that the Roman emperor Augustus (r. 27 BC-AD 14) was able to complete the conquest. Until then, much of Hispania remained autonomous. In 484 the Visigoths established Toledo as the capital of their monarchy. The Visigoths were one of two main branches of the Goths, an East Germanic tribe, the Ostrogoths being the other. The kingdom survived until 711, when King Roderic was killed while opposing an invasion from the south by the Umayyad Muslims in the Battle of Guadalete on July 19. This marked the beginning of the Muslim conquest of Hispania in which most of peninsula came under Islamic rule by 718. On May 25, 1085 Alfonso VI of Castile took Toledo and established direct personal control over the Moorish city from which he had been exacting tribute, and ending the mediaeval Taifa's Kingdom of Toledo . This was the first concrete step taken by the combined kingdom of Leon-Castile in the Reconquista by Christian forces. In the 13th century, Toledo was a major cultural center under the guidance of Alfonso X, called " El Sabio " ("the Wise") for his love of learning. The program of translations, begun under Archbishop Raymond of Toledo , continued to bring vast stores of knowledge to Europe by rendering great academic and philosophical works in Arabic into Latin. When Philip II moved the royal court from Toledo to Madrid in 1561, the old city went into a slow decline from which it never recovered.
