The territory in which the urban center of Reus is located has been inhabited by man, more or less continuously, for almost a million years. As evidenced by the materials preserved and exhibited at the Salvador Vilaseca Archeology Museum, numerous archaeological sites have been located in the area of ​​Reus, from practically all chronological periods. Especially important was the agricultural and livestock exploitation of the Roman period, complemented by intense pottery production.

Despite these ancient precedents, Reus is a town of medieval origin, documented from the year 1154. Thanks to commerce (the port of Salou, the market and the fair), the town soon became one of the great towns del Camp and created a wide area of ​​economic and human influence that covered, already in the XNUMXth century, a large part of southern Catalonia. Reus was a town of feudal lordship, dependent on the chamber of the cathedral of Tarragona, a fact that led to the singularity that two of its lords were elected pope, and one of whom, Benedict XIII, was both pope and feudal lord from Reus.

In the XNUMXth century and up to the first third of the XNUMXth, Reus grew significantly and became a notable industrial center, with an important production of tin and ceramics. The War of the Reapers, however, here as elsewhere, represented a traumatic stoppage, from which it did not begin to recover until the last third of the century.

In the XNUMXth century there was a continuous growth of the population and an extraordinary urban and industrial development, throughout the second half of the century, which led Reus to be the second most populous city in Catalonia. Urbanistically, the city definitely left the walled enclosure to triple the built space. From an economic point of view, the production and export of spirits, but also fabrics, particularly silk, was very noteworthy.

With the XNUMXth century came the end of the old regime and the guild forms of production. The industrialization of the city pushed the change in mentality that brought about the transition from traditional culture to urban culture: in the second half of the century, new ideological concerns took root there and Reus became, after Barcelona, ​​the city of reference for all cultural movements. A serious stoppage of this industrial model, due to the crisis in the textile and wine sectors, led to the transformation of the city, throughout the XNUMXth century, into an important commercial center.

Today, Reus continues to be an important pole of commercial attraction, but also of innovation, especially in food technology, a field in which it is specializing and which is bearing fruit both in research results and in implementation of companies The city also offers another important incentive: the cultural offer is extensive and varied, with its own productions and the implementation of reference festivals.