When the Arabs arrived in Cordoba in 711, they designed the city while happily reusing the surviving Roman structures from the city of Emperor Augustus. Seven Roman gates connected the city with its surroundings, which corresponded nicely with the fact that the Umayyad city of Medina had seven gates. However, the current appearance of this gate corresponds with the time of Christian rule, due to the fact that in the 14th century the city walls were reformed and even more new gates were opened. Until then this door was known as Walnut Gate, possibly due to the simple presence of a nearby walnut tree! It then became known as Almodovar Gate, after the town of Almodóvar del Río that it leads to.