Coin is situated in the fertile valley of the rio Grande approx 21 Km inland from Marbella and there is little doubt that a community of some kind existed on the spot long before the Roman conquest. The coastal mountains meet the Guadalhorce Valley between the cork oak and pine woods of Alpujata de Coin. According to archaeological finds made in the Cerro del Aljibe area of Coin, people have lived here since the first century B.C. Tombs and ceramic pieces found in the Llano de la Virgen area show evidence of a medieval settlement in the area, although we know the Romans stopped off here too. It became a market town: a transition point for the minerals being quarried 5 Km or so to the south in the Sierra Blanca. Marble from these quarries was certainly used in the construction of the Roman town of Italica, which once stood close to Sevilla, and was the birthplace in 76AD of the future emperor, Hadrian. The quarrying of marble and the mining of iron ore went on well into the 19th Century. During the time of the Visigoths, who supplanted the Romans as rulers of the peninsula, the town lost its lustre and appears to have been deserted and left to fall into ruin. By the time that the Moors resettled and rebuilt it around 929AD virtually all of its Roman heritage had been lost, and what little was left disappeared in the rebuilding.