‘I have searched everywhere for the “city of dreams” and found it here, in Ronda,’ Rilke wrote. Hemingway was more practical: ‘[Ronda] is where you should go if you ever go to Spain on a honeymoon or if you ever bolt with anyone. The entire town and as far as you can see in any direction is romantic background…’

Sixty miles inland from Málaga, encircled by mountains, Ronda stands on a plateau cut by a steep, narrow gorge some two hundred yards deep. Eroded over a period of five million years by the river that runs through it, this ravine divides the town in two and ends in a sheer cliff drop to the plain below. Cacti and fig trees grow out of its sides; birds wheel and swoop down the chasm to their nests on the rock face.

Built in 1735 in just eight months, a bridge across the ravine col

See Full Page