VISIGOTH INVASION

Termas de Las Bovedas Roman baths, near San Pedro de Alcantara, which comes under Marbella, and at the Roman villa in Rio Verde.

The northern European Visigoths were frequent visitors to the coast and left their mark in the form of the Vega del Mar Basilica, a necropolis, also to be found in San Pedro.

They, like the giant number of northern Europeans who live here today, would have been attracted by the excellent warm temperate climate, which rarely goes below 8 degrees, nor over 30 degrees, thanks to the protection it gets from the nearby Sierra de las Nieves National Park and pointy La Concha mountain.

In contrast, the early Arabs, or Moors, who arrived in the 8th century found it a fair bit cooler than across the pond, spotting the town’s potential, calling it bien habitada, or ‘place of good living’.

They eventually built a walled city in the old town in the tenth century and even a large Alcazaba castle.

The walls, some of which survive today, were dotted with around a dozen towers, including the Torre del Puente Levadizo (meaning the ‘Drawbridge Tower’) and the Torre de la Puerta de Hierro (or ‘the Iron Door Tower’).

It doesn’t come close to competing with Cordoba or Sevilla for ornate Moorish architecture, but it came a close second to Ronda in terms of size and fell to the Christian Crusaders in the same year, 1485, just seven years before the Catholic Reconquest was complete. Marbella, to conclude, is a destination that has been a lot of different things to a lot of different people over the years, but the cosmopolitan atmosphere, world-class restaurants and perfect climate look set to entice the world’s elite for decades – if not millennia – to come.