Gijón forms part of a large metropolitan area that includes twenty councils in the center of the region, structured with a dense network of roads, highways and railways and with a population of 835,053 inhabitants in 2011, making it the seventh largest in Spain.

However, due to the decline in manufacturing in these industries, in recent years Gijón is undergoing a transformation into an important tourist, university, commercial and R&D center.

The medieval "Gigia" name, in turn, more specifically would refer to the ancient Roman wall built on the peninsula of the Cimavilla neighbourhood of Gijón.

Then the Spanish word "Gijón", which has been also written during the Middle age as "Jijón" or even "Jixón", would be a Castilianization of the Asturian name.

Gijón was capital of the Muslim territories on the Cantabric Sea, under the power of Munuza, for a short period between 713 and 718 or 722.

Gijón was going through a conversion to an industrial town with a new bourgeois and an urban development, opening new streets and squares, with new municipal equipments like water, garbage collection, lighting, and so on.

All this industrial development brought new manpower to the city and the creation of new neighborhoods like Natahoyo, La Calzada, Tremañes or El Humedal.

In the last years of the century was converted in Aceralia, and integrated in Arcelor, along with the Luxembourg-based Arbed and the French company Usinor.

The last decades of the century brought an industrial crisis affecting mainly iron manufacture and local shipbuilding.

The city is situated on the coast of central Asturias, from sea level to an altitude of 513 m (1,683 ft) at Picu Samartín and 672 m (2,205 ft) at Peña de los Cuatro Jueces, bordered on the West by Carreño, the East by Villaviciosa, and to the South by Siero and Llanera.

The city is situated along the Asturian coast and is distinguished by the peninsula of Cimavilla (the original settlement) which separates the beach of San Lorenzo and adjacent neighborhoods to the east from the beaches of Poniente and Arbeyal, the shipyards, and the recreational port and the Port of El Musel to the west.

The onshore flow from the Atlantic Ocean creates a cool summer and mild winter climate where severe heat and very cold temperatures are rare.

Cultural activities are carried out throughout the year, which increase considerably in the summer months, especially in August due to the Feast of the Assumption, with parties, music and theater.

The center was inaugurated on March 30, 2007 as an interdisciplinary space to promote artistic exchange and foster the relationship between society, art, science, technology and the creative industries.

In July 2004, Saltimbanco arrived and in the summer of 2007, they presented Alegría in Gijón, the first time that this tour stopped in northern Spain.

Gijón is the birth place of several notable people, like Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, statesman, author, philosopher and a major figure of the Age of Enlightenment.

The comedy Mortadelo & Filemon: The Big Adventure was also filmed in part in the City of Culture of Gijón.

In 2009, the Laboral and its surroundings were converted to the University of Oxford for Fernando González Molina's film, Brain Drain.

CP Gijón Solimar is one of the most important women's roller hockey teams in Europe as it is five times champion of the European Cup.

The city has in total 13 public sport centers (in Spanish: Centros Municipales Integrados) with swimming pools, gyms and saunas.

For much of the 20th century the town was heavily dependent on mature heavy industries, but at the end of the Francoism, tertiary sector employment began to expand rapidly along with the city's population which by 2007 stood officially at 277,897 for Gijón proper, and approximately 380,000 for the total Gijón agglomeration.

Apart from directly port related activities, the economy is based on tourism, steel (Arcelor), other metallurgy, livestock rearing and fisheries.

Gijón is served by Asturias Airport, about 38 km (24 mi) from the center of the city; it is located in the municipality of Castrillón.