Ciudad Rodrigo (Rodrigo City) is a small cathedral city in Salamanca Province in western Spain (approximately a population of 14000 inhabitants, and head of the judicial district).
The site of Ciudad Rodrigo, perched atop a rocky rise on the right bank of the River Águeda, has been occupied since the Neolithic Age.
Known as Mirobriga to the Celtic people known as the Vettones, the town was conquered by the Romans and renamed Augustobriga in honor of Caesar Augustus.
In 1110, Count Rodrigo González Girón repopulated the site and gave it his name: Civitas Roderici (Latin 'City of Roderick'; translates in Spanish to the present name).
King Ferdinand II of León completed the repopulation of the city, walled it and reconstructed the old Roman bridge spanning the River Águeda.
Ferdinand also re-established the bishopric as suffragan of the Diocese of Santiago de Compostella; comprises the greater part of the province of Salamanca, and a portion of the province of Cáceres, an act confirmed by Pope Alexander III in 1175. This led to the construction of the city's cathedral, an architectural hybrid of the Gothic and late Romanesque styles. The see finally succeeded that of Caliabria, which dated from the Visigothic era, and existed from 621 to 693. King Alfonso VIII gave the city of Caliabria to the Diocese of Ciudad Rodrigo in 1191. The first bishop of whom anything certain is known was called Pedro (1165); the most celebrated was the learned jurist Don Diego de Covarruvias y Leyva (1560).
Its position as a fortified town on the main road from Portugal to Salamanca made it militarily important in the middle years of the Napoleonic Peninsular War. The French marshal Michel Ney took Ciudad Rodrigo in 1810 after a 24-day siege. The British general Wellington began his 1812 campaign by taking Ciudad Rodrigo by storm on the night of January 19 - January 20, 1812 after preparatory operations lasting about 10 days. Allied losses were relatively light (about 600 casualties; 125 dead), although amongst the dead was General Mackinnon. Wellington then moved on Badajoz, whose taking was a much more bloody affair. There were two cannons embedded in the wall of the breach that caused most casualties. The 88th (an Irish regiment) took one of the guns while the 45th (Nottinghamshire Regiment) took the other.
In 1812, the then Viscount Wellington (later created a Duke) was rewarded for his victorious liberation of Spain with the hereditary Spanish ducal victory title of Duque de Ciudad Rodrigo.
Ciudad Rodrigo is also the birthplace of Siglo de Oro writer Feliciano de Silva.