The natural drama of Ronda will leave you breathless!
Ronda is divided in half by a steep river gorge which falls a sheer 130 m on each side.
The town is divided into three parts and the old Moorish citadel or as it is know in Spanish - La Ciudad is the first part of town you will encounter in the Barrio de San Francisco. Enter the old town through the Moorish gate - the Puerta de Almocábar with its characteristic horseshoe arch and make your way into the old city.
A small Moorish minaret now known as the Minaret of San Sebastián has a tale to tell. After the expulsion of the Arabs this tenacious structure switched allegiance and lived on as the belfry of a church, the church is now gone, but the minaret continues miraculously to survive.
The old city walls are still in existence and visitors can climb and walk along them towards the bridge, passing through the more modern and merely decorative Puerta Felipe V.
Visible below is the beautifully preserved Moorish bath house, the Hammam. In its heyday, the bath house drew water directly from the nearby stream. It is open to the public without charge though not, of course, for the purposes of bathing. The barrel vaults are pierced with star-shaped holes to allow illumination, and this is an excellent place to pause and feel the weight of Ronda's years.
would you like to see a stunning moving image of this photo?From the Puerta Felipe V, it is possible to see the lower bridge, the Puente Romano, although there may well have been a Roman bridge here at some time in the distant past, the bridge as it exists today, is undoubtedly a much reconstructed Moorish construction.
Overlooking Puente Romano is another Moorish bridge whose origins are hidden beneath its extensive rebuilding in 1616. The Puente Viejo, or Old Bridge, is so called to distinguish it from Ronda's most famous bridge of all, the Puente Nuevo.
Would you like to take a virtual tour of Ronda? 
Bull Fighting
Bullfights were popular spectacles in ancient Rome, but it was in the Iberian Peninsula that these contests were fully developed. The Moors from North Africa who overran Andalusia in AD 711 changed bullfighting significantly from the brutish, formless spectacle practised by the conquered Visigoths to a ritualistic occasion observed in connection with feast days, on which the conquering Moors, mounted on highly trained horses, confronted and killed the bulls.
As bullfighting developed, the men on foot, who by their capework aided the horsemen in positioning the bulls, began to draw more attention from the crowd, and the modern corrida began to take form.
Pedro Romero is undoubtedly the most celebrated name in the history of the corrida (Bullfight) he was not the first member of his family to grace the ring. His grandfather, Francisco, born in Ronda in 1698, was a great innovator. It was he who introduced, among other things, the muleta.
It had become traditional for matadors to carry a short cloak over their left arms. Francisco Romero found this cumbersome, and draped his instead over a stick. Romero's innovations soon became known as the "Ronda school" to distinguish them from the "Seville school" which had been the dominant style before he exploded onto the scene. Juan Romero lived to be 102, and fathered three sons - Juan, Gaspar, José - and one legend - Pedro, was revolutionary in an altogether more fundamental way.
He is considered the first matador to truly conceive of the bullfight as an art and a skill in its own right, and not simply as a clownishly macho preamble to the bull's slaughter. He had great rivals, notably Joaqín Rodríguez "Costillares", and the Sevillian Pepe Hillo, but Pedro Romero unquestionably outshone them all.
Festivals in Ronda
Fiesta de la Virgen de la Paz
Patron Saint of Ronda - January 24th.
Semana Santa
Holy week.
Like all Andalucian towns, Ronda celebrates holy week with processions, most of which begin in the late afternoon and take hours to wend through the streets and alleys of the old city.
Feria de la Reconquista
20th to 23rd May.
Bullfights and Cattlemarket.
Goyesque Fair
Feria Goyesca de Pedro Romero. First Week in September.
This fair is renowned for the bullfight held on the first Saturday of September, in which the toreros don the traditional bullfighting garb of the 18th and 19th centuries, known as the Goyesque Period.
Before the men face the bulls, there is a parade of horse-drawn carriages procession through the town, with all participants in full Goyesque costume. The procession ends on the sands of the bullring.
Marbella and the coast
The beaches and tourist resorts of the Costa del Sol are only 1 hour away by car so why not take a virtual tour of
Marbella, the regions Jet Set hot spot while your here?
Thanks to Andalucia.com,
Dobar
Carnivals in Spain are a fantastic experience and offer the chance to watch and take part with the Spanish people, from the oldest old ladies to the youngest children, all dressed in their carnival finery, dancing and partying on the streets all day and more often than not, well into the night.
