Alicante, from the Explanada to Santa Bárbara castle: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
From the Explanada to the Santa Bárbara castle
The walk starts at sea level. The town hall holds the mark from which Spain measures altitude, and from there the old town rises past hermitages and old cisterns on the slope of Mount Benacantil, before the route drops to the beach and the castle on top of the mountain.
The stops
Where this promenade runs, the harbour front was once a defensive glacis guarded by the San Carlos bastion, and in the 1830s the ground was levelled to make a seafront walk. Its wavy floor dates from the 1950s: about 7.5 million marble tesserae in red, cream and black, laid in a pattern inspired by the Rossio square in Lisbon, which the mayor and an architect had seen on a trip. In 1868 the walk was renamed Paseo de los Mártires de la Libertad for the 24 men shot in 1844 after a progressive uprising, among them Colonel Pantaleón Boné.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 This towered white block at the start of the Explanada dates from the mid-1920s and is the work of the Alicante architect Juan Vidal Ramos, who mixed historicist and Valencian Modernista touches. It was commissioned by Enrique Carbonell, a textile businessman from Alcoy who had grown rich during the First World War and wanted long stays in the city, and it stands on ground that held the city's market in the 19th century. It is recorded that in the year it was inaugurated a seaplane from Algiers hit a terrace on its dome and both crew died.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 This baroque town hall went up over the 18th century, with the plans drawn in 1699 and the work finished in 1780, on the site of an earlier hall from 1541 that French warships destroyed in the bombardment of 1691. Two taller towers flank the front, and passages through them link the Plaza del Ayuntamiento with the Plaza de la Santísima Faz. At the foot of the main staircase is the cota cero, the mark from which altitude above sea level is measured anywhere in Spain, fixed by almost four years of measurements at the port of Alicante between 1870 and 1874.
Photo: Emilio J. Rodríguez Posada — CC BY-SA 4.0 This quiet square behind the town hall is named for the Santa Faz, a cloth said to have wiped Christ's face on the way to Calvary; the relic is kept in a monastery about 8 km from the city, and a pilgrimage to it has been held every spring since the 15th century. A plaque records that the physician Francisco Javier de Balmis was born on this square in 1753, and he went on to lead the 1803 expedition that took the smallpox vaccine to Spanish America, the Philippines and China. A fountain with a relief of the Santa Faz and a stone cross with a ceramic panel stand in the square.
Photo: Varondán — CC BY-SA 4.0 Alicante was handed by its Muslim rulers to Prince Alfonso of Castile on 6 December 1244, the feast of St Nicholas, and he ordered a church built in the saint's honour. The church seen today was designed by Agustín Bernardino, a pupil of Juan de Herrera, built in the 17th century and finished in 1662, and a blue dome rises about 45 m over the crossing. Its Chapel of the Holy Communion, a small Greek-cross temple, is counted among the most beautiful examples of Spanish Baroque, and in 1959 the church became a co-cathedral, sharing the diocese's seat with Orihuela.
Photo: Fernando — CC BY-SA 4.0 The little hermitage of Santa Cruz gives its name to the quarter and stands on the slope of Mount Benacantil, close to the castle. It was built in the 18th century on the Ampolla tower, one of the few remains of the city's medieval wall, and a mosque may have stood on the spot in the 13th century. It was rebuilt in 1830 and again in 1945 after Civil War damage, and every Holy Wednesday the Santa Cruz procession sets out from it and goes down the narrow, steep lanes of the quarter.
Photo: Varondán — CC BY-SA 4.0 The city council built this small chapel in 1559 in thanks to St Roch, who according to local legend saved Alicante from the plague. In 1869 its vault threatened to fall and the chapel was replaced by a new one designed by José Guardiola Picó, who kept six of the 16th-century stone arches and gave the building a neo-medieval look. Each 16 August a service in the saint's honour was held here, and the town's stonemasons looked after the chapel.
Photo: Varondán — CC BY-SA 4.0 These rock-cut cisterns hold 841,000 litres between them and took their present form in 1862 and 1863 under Antonio Garrigós, after long droughts and sudden floods. They caught rainwater running down Mount Benacantil from a catchment of about 54,000 square metres, and the water was carried into the town and sold by the jar. When water arrived from Sax in 1898 they lost their purpose, and during the Civil War they served as air-raid shelters; today they are part of the Museo de Aguas.
Photo: Joanbanjo — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Casa de la Asegurada, built in 1685, is the oldest civil building still standing in Alicante. It began as a granary and later served as a jail, a powder store, a school of commerce and, for a time, a seat of the town hall. Today it is part of the Alicante Museum of Contemporary Art, created in 1976 thanks to Eusebio Sempere, whose collection of 20th-century art, with works by Miró, Picasso and Dalí, was donated to the city that year.
Photo: Joanbanjo — CC BY-SA 3.0 Alicante's oldest church was built in Valencian Gothic style between the 14th and 16th centuries on the site of the city's main mosque, which Alfonso X purified in 1248 and dedicated to Saint Mary of the Assumption. The two façade towers look alike but are not: the right one is L-shaped and dates from the 14th century, while the rectangular one was raised in 1713, and the baroque portal has sculptures by Juan Bautista Borja. The physician Francisco Javier de Balmis, who later led the smallpox vaccine expedition and was born in Alicante in 1753, is said to have been baptized here three days after his birth.
Photo: Joanbanjo — Public domain The beach takes its name from el Postigo, a small gate in the old city wall that gave access to the town. Until the early 20th century it was a stony shore where fishermen of the Raval Roig quarter hauled up their boats, and the cheap excursion trains from Madrid that began in 1893 earned it the nickname playa de Madrid. From here the south face of Mount Benacantil shows a rocky outline known as la cara del moro, the face of the Moor, and a tunnel that starts on Avenida de Jovellanos, opposite the beach, leads to the lifts up to the castle.
Photo: Frayter — CC BY-SA 4.0 The fortress crowns Mount Benacantil, about 166 m above the sea, and is named for Saint Barbara because Alfonso of Castile took it from its Muslim defenders on her feast day, 4 December 1248. Its origins go back to the 9th century, and the great rebuilding came under Philip II, whose works ran from 1562 to 1580. It stood abandoned until 1963, when it opened to the public and two lifts through the mountain were inaugurated; inside is now the Museum of the City of Alicante, and marks and engravings left by prisoners held here in the Civil War can still be seen in places.
Photo: H.Helmlechner — CC BY-SA 4.0
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