León, chief town of its province and the see of a bishop, lies at the confluence of the Río Torío and the Río Bernesga in the northwestern part of the central Spanish plateau, the Meseta, under the south side of the Cantabrian Mountains. It is the chief place in an iron-and coal-mining region and an
important trading center for the cattle reared in the surrounding area.
History
León owes its name to the Roman Seventh Legion, having developed out of the Legion's camp in the first century A.D. The town was destroyed at the end of the 10th Century by Almansor's Moorish army but was rebuilt in the reign of Alfonso V (999-1027). Its heyday was in the 10th-12th Centuries, when it was for a time capital of the kingdom of León, which extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rhône. It lost this status, however, when the kingdoms of León and Castile were reunited in 1230, and thereafter it declined. During the Middle Ages León was an important staging-point on the Way of St James for pilgrims traveling to Santiago de Compostela.
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