It is located approximately 30 km (19 mi) north of the city of Valencia, close to the Costa del Azahar on the Mediterranean Sea.

[5] During the 5th c. BC the Iberians built a walled settlement on the hill overseeing the plain; a stretch of cyclopean limestone slabs from the former Temple of Diana survives, close to the modern church of Santa Maria.

The city traded with coastal colonies in the western Mediterranean such as Carthage and, under their influence, minted its own coins.

During this period, the city was known as Arse (Iberian: Arsesken)[6][7] By 219 BC, Saguntum was a large and commercially prosperous town, which sided with the local colonists and Rome against Carthage, and drew Hannibal's first assault, his siege of Saguntum, which triggered the Second Punic War, one of the most important wars of antiquity.

This prosperity lasted for most of the empire, and is attested by inscriptions and ruins (notably a theatre, demolished by Napoleon's marshal Louis Gabriel Suchet, who also destroyed the Roman tower of Hercules).

Under the Arian Visigothic kings, Saguntum received its Catholic patron saint, a bishop named Sacerdos, "the priest", who died peacefully of natural causes about AD 560.

During the Peninsular War, a Spanish attempt to raise the French siege of the castle failed in the Battle of Saguntum on 25 October 1811.

In the late 19th century, a steel-making industry grew up that supported the modern city, which extends in the coastal plain below the citadel hill.

According to a Jewish legend, a tombstone was found in Sangunto with the inscription "Adoniram, treasurer of King Solomon, who came to collect the tax tribute and died."