Later it was a trading colony occupied by the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians, who destroyed the city in 216 BCE. In 206 BCE, Scipio Africanus founded Italica nearby, to settle his wounded veterans, and began the reconstruction of Hispalis.

The architecture of the older parts of the city still reflects the centuries of Moorish control of the city, beginning in 711. After a brief independence as one of the taifa principalities, from 1023 to 1091, when it was the seat of the Abbadids while the Caliphate of Cordoba collapsed, Seville then fell to the Reconquista of Ferdinand III of Castile in 1248.

Seville was governed from Cordoba but as a port it retained strategic importance: Emir Abd ar-Rahman II built a fleet and arsenal at Seville in the mid-9th century.