Valencia

The 14th century began badly. Floods and the Black Death of 1348 were followed by the War of the Two Peters, when Castilian armies attacked three times between 1359 and 1364 and a new wall had to be raised in haste, and in 1391 a mob stormed the Jewish quarter, killing thousands. Yet the city was already turning to silk, as Genoese merchants spread the white mulberry across the huerta and brought new ways of weaving. The 15th century became Valencia's Golden Age: the city founded its own bank in 1407, raised the Silk Exchange in 1482, and by 1500 was the most populous city of the Crown of Aragon and one of the largest in Europe.

The turn came in the 17th century. In 1609 the Moriscos, close to a third of the kingdom's people, were expelled. In the War of the Spanish Succession Valencia's side lost at Almansa in 1707, and Philip V abolished the Furs, the kingdom's own laws. For decades it lived as an occupied city, with soldiers quartered in the Citadel and even in the Silk Exchange, which served as a barracks until 1762.