Ibiza Cathedral

**Nearly three thousand years — the island was an important trading station long before it was anything else.** ✅ **The founding**: **the Phoenicians founded a settlement on Ibiza around **654 BC**** — ⚠ **as *Ibossim***; **its position ideal as a stage on the sea route between Carthage and the Iberian peninsula**. ✅ **Then the Carthaginians**: ⚠ **the island became wholly Carthaginian**, **and an important centre for the trade in salt, wool and dye**; ✅ **it struck its own coinage**. ⚠ **And its name comes from there**: **most likely from the god **Bes**** — **a Carthaginian protective deity**, **whose figures are found abundantly on the island**. ✅ **The greatest evidence — Puig des Molins**: **a vast necropolis on a hill inside the modern town** — ⚠ **thousands of rock-cut tombs**, **the largest preserved Phoenician-Punic necropolis in the western Mediterranean**. ⚠ **Why here**: ✅ **the Phoenicians believed the island free of venomous animals** — **so it became a favoured burial place**; **with the dead brought from elsewhere too**. ✅ **Then Rome (123 BC), the Vandals, Byzantium, the Muslims (902–1235), and Aragon.** ⚠ **And all of them lie under Dalt Vila.**