Sant Martí d’Empúries is a neighbourhood dependent on L'Escala, preserved as a mediaeval town. It was once a peninsula and received its first inhabitants in the 9th century BC. Three centuries later it established commercial relations with the Phoenicians, Punics and Phocaean Massaliotes, which marked the beginning of the negotiations which made Empúries one of the most important ports on the Mediterranean. Since that time Sant Martí d’Empúries has always been inhabited.