Ronda sightseeing

When we went down to breakfast, cloud enveloped the whole of the town and the mountains around. Slowly during the morning the cloud lifted, revealed the plain and the peaks. By mid afternoon all was bathed in bright sunshine again. We walked and walked all day, seeing as much as we could manage of this extraordinary town with a millennium of rich cultural history. 

One of the most remarkable places we visited was the garden of the house one of Ronda's Moorish rulers, which contains 'La Mina', a 14th century flight of 208 steps, about 200 feet down from one of the garden terraces to the river.

Remarkable, because it was excavated by Christian slaves through and inside the limestone conglomerate of the cliff face, hardly visible from the exterior. Even so, the stair well was illuminated through brickwork lattices at points where the the stairs were through open cliff face. Slave power carried water up from the river to the gardens by means of a human chain. An extraordinary feat of engineering from the days before pumps were invented.

Ronda doesn't have a Cathedral, but it does have a huge Collegiate church of high ecclesial standing. Until the re-conquista, it was the grand mosque of a predominantly Moorish population.

In the same square, to the right in this picture is the current Ajuntamiento, which began life as a mediaeval Moorish market and served as a cavalry barracks during its long history. The church tower with its ring of bells started life as a substantial minaret. Inside the entrance area of the church, the ornate mihrab of the mosque was preserved, when it was uncovered during restoration after a nineteenth century earthquake.

There's also a seventeenth century convent of the Poor Clares, still in use and occupied by a community of contemplative nuns, which still lives and worships within a prison like enclosure.

Everywhere there amazing views of the surrounding countryside from balconied parks and walkways -

There are also an immense variety of views of the canyon and its three stone arched bridges from every level.

Ronda also has Spain's oldest bull ring. It's the town where the present theatrical ceremonial surrounding the bull fight was invented in the late eighteenth century and spread from here. Hemingway and Hitchcock amongst many creative people found inspiration here in another era. It doesn't appeal to me, the town and its environment are quite enough.

We dined in the Parador for a second night, and I ate white bean and partridge stew, a traditional rural dish, very filling, the portion I was served would have done two ordinary meals if I was cooking it myself and I couldn't finish it. A bit like Ronda itself, such a lot to see, too much for one very full day. We must come again!