Spira ("Old Spira," "Old Spider," "The Third City" [referring to the five great cities of 7th-century Sakkomir], "The Capital of the World," "The City That Remembers") has never stopped acting like all of Ihlathi revolves around it. It's never clear how much of that is genuine failure to understand and how much of it is the characteristic Spiran refusal to show weakness or admit to being anything less than perfect.

A sprawling city of nine recognized districts, Spira is packed with markets, alleyways, towers, and ruins, not to mention the Great Stadium, plus its dozens of smaller sisters. What it isn't packed with is people; a population which would overflow most of the cities on Ihlathi almost gets lost among Spira's thousands of abandoned and ruined buildings. The number of inhabitants has grown steadily in recent centuries but is still a very far cry from the teeming million who occupied it when its armies ruled the continent.

Even so, the city's central squares are crowded any day of the week, and caravans from all over western Ihlathi pass through by the dozens carrying goods from everywhere wagons or ships can reach, brokered and commanded by its scheming merchant princes (and its merchant Prince, Gero Altaverde). Besides its history, modern Spira is known for three things: trade, treachery, and Blitzball.