At the end of September 2025, a long-awaited event took place at the archaeological site in El Puerto de Santa María, in the province of Cádiz. After a thirty-year hiatus in systematic excavations, a team of archaeologists from the University of Cádiz returned to study the enigmatic Phoenician city of Doña Blanca. Their efforts paid off: this time, they managed to uncover monumental city gates, which had long existed only as a hypothesis on scholars’ maps.
Work was carried out in exhausting heat, but it was on one of the cooler September days that luck smiled on the researchers. The archaeologists’ attention was drawn to a massive stone block, which turned out to be part of the ancient city entrance. This discovery confirmed suspicions about the location of the main city gate, believed by experts to have been built in the style of Hellenistic fortifications. The gates were positioned at a turn in the fortress wall, making them difficult for enemies to access.
Doña Blanca is considered one of the most important Phoenician centers in the western Mediterranean. The city was founded by settlers from Tyre in the 8th century BCE and endured until the 3rd century BCE. Over this period, it became a major commercial and cultural hub, through which goods, ideas, and people passed. Despite its vast area—about seven hectares—only a small part of the site has been explored so far.
During the current campaign, archaeologists focused on a 100-square-meter area within the ancient walls. In addition to the gate, they discovered parts of defensive structures, including a catapult bollard and fragments of pottery dating to the second phase of the city’s existence. These finds are especially valuable as they shed light on a little-studied period between the 4th and 5th centuries BC, when the region experienced major changes linked to the decline of neighboring Gadir and the arrival of the Carthaginians.
Doña Blanca has long remained overshadowed by more famous landmarks, but new discoveries are offering a fresh perspective on the city’s role in the history of Andalusia. Archaeologists hope that further research will help reconstruct the picture of daily life and defense in the ancient settlement, as well as reveal how the city’s layout evolved over time. One thing is already clear: the discovered gate is only the beginning of new findings lying beneath the ground.
