Ceuta is a Spanish exclave in North Africa, located on a northern tip of the Maghreb, on the Mediterranean coast near the Strait of Gibraltar. It is known in Arabic as سبتة (Sabtah in Standard Arabic, Sebta in Morocco). Its area is approximately 28 km².
Ceuta is dominated by a hill called Monte Hacho, on which there is a fort occupied by the Spanish army. Monte Hacho is one of the possible locations for the southern Pillars of Hercules of Greek Legend, the other possibility being Jebel Musa.
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Ceuta is known officially in Spanish as Ciudad Autónoma de Ceuta, the Autonomous City of Ceuta, having a rank between a standard Spanish city and an autonomous community. Before the Statute of Autonomy, Ceuta was administratively part of the Cádiz province.
Ceuta forms part of the territory of the European Union. The city was a free port before Spain joined the European Union in 1986. Now it has a low-taxes system inside the European Monetary Syste ...
Ceuta's strategic location has made it the crucial waypoint of many cultures' trade and military ventures — beginning with the Carthaginians in the 5th century BC (They called the city Abyla). It wasn't until the Romans took control in about AD 42, however, that the port city (named Septem at the time) assumed an almost exclusive military purpose. Approximately 400 years later, the Vandals ousted the Romans for control, and later it fell to the Visigoths of Spain or to the Byzantines. In 710, as Muslim invade ...
