Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time...

… in the Neolithic era, some human beings found shelter in several caves of the area, as some vestiges show. These first people, no doubt recognized the mildness of the local climate…

This was perhaps the beginning of Marbella, known worldwide today, a city that has not appeared out of the blue, a city whose existence is not only a consequence of the tourist development of the last decades. We would like to pay a tribute to the other Marbella, the original Marbella, that rich ancient legacy.

The story seems to continue with the Phoenicians, who were attracted to this part of the Mediterranean. They chose the seaside as a place to live, as revealed by the remains of their settlements, found some years ago in today’s Rio Real area.

But it was probably between the first and second century before Christ that Marbella lived its first period of splendour. At the time, the Romans founded a city (possibly the city of Salduba mentioned in several manuscripts of the time), taking advantage of the strategic location as part of the Via Augusta, where their people settled and made a living from agricultural activities and tuna-fish processing. Everything seems to indicate that today’s old city has been constructed on top of the ancient Roman city, and many of its elements were later incorporated into the architectural craft of the Arabs. Romans also found in Marbella a place for leisure, as revealed by ruins of different periods, found in the area: a Roman villa in Rio Verde, or the leisure house with hot baths whose remains can still be seen in the Guadalmina area. Perhaps these Roman families were the predecessors of the present holiday homes! Visigoths, also made this land their home, and left their historical imprint in one of the most representative monuments of this period in Spain: the Paleo-Christian basilica of Vega del Mar.

It is impossible to talk about Marbella without mentioning the Muslims, whose presence in the area was recorded somewhere around the eighth century. The so-called Castle of Marbella, one of their most distinguishing marks, was part of a walled Medina with a population of almost 3,000 people dedicated to agricultural activities. Its strategic and defensive character is reflected in the various watchtowers, distributed all along its coast, that even today stand as silent reminders of ancient times of splendour, in the old Marbil-la o Marballah (possible root of the current name of the city).

In 1485 Marbella was recovered by the Catholic Kings of Spain on their way to reconquer Granada. The city was recovered on June 11, Saint Bernabe’s day, who became its patron and symbol of the local festivities. This was a time of expansion, construction of squares, churches, streets and possibly the origin of the city of Marbella as such. The emblematic Plaza de los Naranjos (Orange Square) corresponds to the Christian design of that time, as well as the Town Hall building, the House of the Chief Magistrate, the Hermitage of Santiago, and the fountain located at the edge of the square.

And the growth of Marbella continued… The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, witnessed the birth of new neighbourhoods, the fort of San Luis (where the Hotel El Fuerte stands today), new churches and a project to reinforce the defences of the Castle. The nineteenth century brought about an industrial wave, with the creation of two iron mines (the first blast furnaces in Spain) and beginning of an agricultural community in the present San Pedro de Alcantara, the construction of the Port and the exploitation of the Peñoncillo iron mines. The industrial activity was gradually substituted by tourism, thanks to the efforts of several visionary entrepreneurs.

Although the twentieth century set the foundations for the present day Marbella -- with the creation of the first hotels, the first urbanizations, golf courses, and marinas which have enabled Marbella to start the twenty-first century with an excellent outlook--, we must not forget that it is the magical fascination of the place that keeps attracting people from all over the world, as it once attracted so many different civilizations and cultures over the course of its long, yet little known, history.