Ronda

This Ronda deli is filled with hanging Iberian hams, but also has a wide array of the other delicacies to taste or take home for your favourite foodie. Its café/bar is a great spot for breakfast.

Just outside of the beautiful town of Ronda, in the gorgeous Andalusian countryside of the Sierra de Grazalema region, you’ll find a series of so-called White Villages (Pueblos Blancos) scattered across the landscape, sprawling over and down large hills.

These 20 hill towns are named after their glowing, universally white walls. The buildings are all white-washed with slaked lime – known locally as ‘cal‘ – that bleaches in the sun to a sparkling white, a practice introduced by the Arabic-speaking Moors. Not only does the white colour keep homes cool during the searing Andalusian summers, but it came to symbolise hygiene. When a series of epidemics from plague to cholera and yellow fever swept through the region between the 16th and 19th centuries, houses were painted with cal in the wake of infection. (It may have actually helped: studies have shown that slaked lime does kill bacteria that cause cholera).

Relax in this charming spa, built amid the 700-year old ruins of Ronda’s Arab baths, with its five pools in various temperatures, sauna, infrared room and ice fountain; massages are available as well.

An 18th-century mansion where can visit the half-French, half-Moorish garden and the extraordinary ‘water mine’ that supplied Ronda, 231 steps below the gardens to the Tajo river.

Ronda’s town museum is housed in the 14th-century royal palace of Moorish king Abomelic I, with its gardens, Moorish courtyards and views out over the Sierra de Grazalema. Exhibits cover the town’s history, and the nearby Pileta Cave.