Antequera travel guide

You know a town must be pretty old when even the Romans named it ‘ancient place’, or Antikaria. It’s an excellent place to visit; on the city’s edge stand three stunning prehistoric dolmens, perhaps the most impressive such monuments in Europe. The old town has numerous noble buildings of great interest, and the surrounding area offers tempting excursions to the dramatic rockscapes of El Torcal, the Lobo Park wolfery, and the flamingo lake of La Fuente de Piedra.

The dolmens are an obvious indication that the Antequera hilltop was an important prehistoric settlement, and the town’s strategic position at the head of one of the easiest routes to the coast also appealed to the Romans. The Moors fortified the town with a citadel and, as part of the kingdom of Granada, Antequera didn’t fall to the Christians until 1410. After becoming an important military base for assaults on the remaining Moorish possessions, the city grew in wealth in the 16th and 17th centuries, from which period most of its monuments date.