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Hotels & Accommodation | Property & Real Estate
Villages of cave-dwellers
Like neighbouring Granada, Almeria province is famous
for its troglodytic villages, where many homes
are dug out of soft sand-coloured cliffs. These "casas-cuevas"
(cave-houses) provide excellent insulation from the dry, desert-like
fierce heat typical of this province. They often have a conventional
façade with windows and tiled roofs, while above are chimneys
that jut up from the earth behind. Chimney-like skylights are dug
for interior lighting of the cave.
As well as the casas cuevas in the Barrio de Chanca
area in Almeria city, the most
interesting cave-dweller settlements are Alhabia,
Gádor and Benahadux, in
the region around Santa Fé de Mondújar and near the
recently excavated site of Los
Millares, the largest Bronze Age settlement in Europe with a
prehistoric fortress built 2,000 years before Christ. There are
also caves in the Almeria section of the Alpujarras,
at Fondón and at Láujar
de Andarax.
Spaghetti Westerns & solar energy
in the Spanish desert
In the 1960s Italian movie directors like Sergio
Leone filmed their own version of the North American Wild West among
the mesetas and cactus trees of the Desierto
de Tabernas Natural Area and the ramshackle film sets have been
turned into a tourist attraction, Mini Hollywood, complete with
trading posts and double-door saloons. The nearby village of Tabernas
makes a good base for exploring the desert and has a charming church
built in the Mudejar style.
On the edge of the arid Sierra de Gádor is
the spa town of Alhama de Almería, renowned
for its thermal waters with a modern hotel on the site of the original
baths.
Láujar
de Andarax is the largest village in the Sierra
Nevada National Park in Almeria province. Above Láujar
are some superb views across the valley below and there are many
good walks in the surrounding hills. Just outside the town is a
great picnic spot on the shady banks of the Andarax river, close
to its source.
Pottery & Ceramics
The village of Níjar
is famous for its numerous pottery workshops as well as its production
of jarapas, which are rugs and bedcovers made from rags. The barren,
dusty hills around the village are sprinkled with picturesque villages
some of which also have a tradition of producing ceramics, such
as Sorbas, Ulelia del Campo, Lubrín,
Bédar and Vera, as well
as the town of Albox,
north of Ulelia del Campo.
Coastal villages
Mojácar is
the largest resort on the Costa
Almeria, popular with foreign residents, many of them British;
around half of its population of 5,000 come from the EU. Mojácar
is divided between a stunning hilltop old part of the town, Mojácar
Pueblo, and the newer seafront Mojácar Playa,
built alongside a superb sandy beach. A more low-key resort is San
José, the centre of the extraordinary Cabo
de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, with some of Andalucia´s
most magnificent beaches such as the Playa de los Genoveses and
the Playa de Monsul.
North of Mojácar is the small resort of Villaricos
with a pebble beach. Roquetas
de Mar is a popular resort 25km west of Almeria with a broad,
sandy beach and many watersport activities and golf courses.
Northern Mountains
The villages in the far north of the province have
a flavour all of their own, since they were some of the first in
the region to be reconquered by the Christians. The austere Castilian
influence can be seen in the stone castles and palaces of Vélez
Rubio and Vélez
Blanco, whose elegant Renaissance courtyard now stands in the
Metropolitan Museum of New York. Vélez Blanco is also the
gateway to the Sierra
María-Los Vélez Natural Park, a mountainous area
with extensive forests, which are a rare sight in this otherwise
arid, barren province.
Dissecting the area south of the Sierra de María
east-west is the Almanzora river and in its valley
are Serón and Tijola, with
their famous fountains, and Purchena. South of Purchena is Macael,
a well-known centre of marble quarries.
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