Ronda, the gorge city: Plaza de Toros to the Arab Baths: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
The gorge city, an old bullring and three bridges
Aldehuela is also credited with finishing the Puente Nuevo, which joins the new town to the old across the gorge. In the old town the layers show: a Moorish water mine, a Nasrid house, a palace the Catholic Monarchs stayed in after 1485, and a church built on a mosque. Below it all runs the same river, which three bridges cross at different heights.
The stops
Finished in 1785, this bullring is considered one of the oldest in Spain and one of the first built entirely of stone. Its design is attributed to Martín de Aldehuela, who is also credited with finishing the Puente Nuevo, and its ring measures 66 metres across. At its second opening, in May 1785, the rivals Pedro Romero and Pepe Hillo faced each other in front of Ronda's most noble families.
Photo: SchiDD — CC BY-SA 4.0 This tree-lined garden, once called the Alameda de San Carlos, dates from the early 1800s and sits on the edge of the gorge beside the bullring. Five landscaped avenues lead to a promenade with balconies over the plain and the Serranía de Ronda. Some of its trees are more than 200 years old. The gardens hold a Himalayan cedar, a huge stone pine and a statue of the bullfighter Pedro Romero.
Photo: JoseMSojo — CC BY-SA 4.0 The first bridge here, begun in 1735, collapsed in 1741 and killed 50 people. Work on its replacement started in 1759 and took 34 years, and the bridge was completed in 1793, with José Martín de Aldehuela the master credited with finishing it; some accounts name Domingo Lois de Monteagudo as the original designer. It is the newest and largest of the three bridges across the gorge, which is 100 metres deep or more, and a chamber above the central arch has served several purposes, including as a prison.
Photo: Pedro J Pacheco — CC BY-SA 3.0 es Of the palace's Andalusi period only the layout, the foundations and some underground passages remain; in the 14th century the Marinid king Abd al-Malik is recorded as living here. After the Catholic Monarchs took Ronda on 24 May 1485 they stayed in the palace, and it then passed to Captain Melchor de Mondragón, whose coat of arms is on the doorway and gives the palace its name. The town bought it in 1975, and it now houses the Museo de Ronda, with finds from Ronda's archaeological sites.
Photo: Elliott Brown from Birmingham, United Kingdom — CC BY-SA 2.0 Built between the end of the 13th century and the early 14th, this small palace is considered one of the best preserved examples of Nasrid architecture. Its rooms are laid out around a central courtyard with a pool, and its name comes from two large stone figures, perhaps Phoenician or Punic, that once decorated its corners. Only one survives, and its shape is hard to make out. In the 19th century the house served as a foundling home.
Photo: Michel wal — CC BY-SA 3.0 This church stands on the city's main mosque, a 13th-century building of which part of the mihrab survives. Lightning destroyed the earlier tower in 1523, and the brick tower seen today was built afterwards. Around the turn of the 17th century a triple gallery was added to the front so that people could watch the spectacles held in the big square before it.
Photo: Fedoce1 (Fernando Domínguez Cerejido) — CC BY-SA 4.0 This square tower began as the minaret of a mosque and later served the church of San Sebastián, which no longer exists. Its two lower storeys are Moorish work, and the top one, built to hold the bells, was added after the Christian conquest. The stone doorway at the base is framed by a double band that still holds traces of green glazed ceramic.
Photo: Olaf Tausch — CC BY 3.0 The palace is known for its Baroque doorway, where four carved figures in the Inca style hold up a pediment bearing the builders' coat of arms, much as classical atlantes would. The house is described as an 18th-century renovation of a 16th-century building that the Catholic Monarchs gave to the family of Don Vasco Martín de Salvatierra. Its garden behind looks over the Sierra de las Nieves, the remains of the medieval walls and the Arab baths.
Photo: Daniel VILLAFRUELA. — CC BY-SA 4.0 Despite the name, no Moorish king lived in this house, which dates from the 18th century. What is genuinely old is the water mine, a stair cut into the cliff in the 14th century so the walled town could draw water from the river in a siege; Christian slaves turned its great wheel. The Duchess of Parcent bought the house in 1911 and had the French landscape architect Jean Claude Nicolas Forestier design the terraced garden that looks over the gorge.
Photo: cloudsoup — CC BY 2.0 After the first Puente Nuevo fell in 1741, the traffic of people and goods had to use this city entrance again, and it needed improving. In 1742, under Philip V, the first Bourbon king of Spain, the old Arab Puerta de la Puente was replaced by this larger gate, as a stone inscription nearby records. The double ashlar arch is topped by three pinnacles and carries the Anjou shell and the Bourbon royal arms on its outer face.
Photo: Benjamin Smith — CC BY-SA 4.0 Until the Puente Nuevo went up in the 18th century, this bridge was itself known as the new bridge, and it linked the old city with the growing district of the Mercadillo. Despite its name it is newer than the Puente Romano, and it is the second oldest and second lowest of the three bridges over the gorge. The year 1616 belongs to it: the Spanish page says a flood destroyed the bridge that year and an inscription records that Ronda rebuilt it, while the English page simply says it was built in 1616. Today it carries only pedestrians.
Photo: Julia Kostecka — CC BY 2.0 Tradition holds that the first Christian church in Ronda, from before Muslim rule, began on this spot. The present church looks Gothic and was probably begun in the late 15th century and finished in the 16th, and it was first dedicated to Santa Cecilia. It was one of Ronda's busiest parishes until the Puente Nuevo was built, when people moved to the flatter upper Mercadillo and the old parish was left almost in ruins.
Photo: Michel wal — CC BY-SA 3.0 This stone fountain is believed to date from the first half of the 18th century, in the reign of Philip V, like the arch that bears his name. One face has a trough for animals and the other has eight spouts feeding eight monolithic basins, which gives the fountain its name. Above them sit a pediment with the city's coat of arms, an empty niche that once held a sacred image, and a cross.
Photo: Michel wal — CC BY-SA 3.0 The lowest of the three bridges over the gorge is known both as the Puente Romano and as the Puente Árabe, because Roman foundations carry a bridge rebuilt in the Arab period. It lies outside the old city walls, and two accounts say it fell out of use in the 16th century, when the growing Mercadillo district needed a better link with the old city and the Puente Viejo took over.
Photo: Mihael Grmek — CC BY-SA 3.0 These medieval steam baths stood at the foot of the vanished Puerta de la Puente, because baths were a customary stop for outsiders arriving in a city. They were built beside the river because Ronda's high town has no water of its own, and a water wheel at the meeting of the Arroyo de las Culebras and the Guadalevín fed a small aqueduct to the boiler room. Heated air under the floors warmed the hot and warm rooms, and steam came from water thrown on the burning-hot floor.
Photo: Julia Kostecka — CC BY 2.0
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