Moraira Castle was built in the 18th century both for defensive purposes and as a lookout tower. It stands at the end of the l'Ampolla beach. It is a traditional "ox bow", shape and has a semi-circular south-facing façade. There is a Bourbon emblem over the entrance, consisting of the date on which it was finished 1742. In the past there was a moat and drawbridge which protected the occupants of the tower. The sloping walls are ten metres high and are made of stone, faced with tosca stone slabs hewn from the fossilised dunes that surround it. The roof is protected by a small wall, with seven openings that form battlements where the cannons were positioned. There are thick dividing walls that separating the inside of the building into a central nave with two smaller rooms to the side. The inside measures 200 square metres. It is lit by three small windows that look south, with a fourth window over the entrance door. There is a small chapel opposite the door to the fortress and a small cistern a few metres to the east. This is from the same period and was used to store water for consumption by the occupants of the tower. There is a themed installation inside explaining the watchtowers of the Valencian coastline.
The auditorium was designed by Francisco Mangado and is a contemporary-style building. It was officially opened in 2011. This sleek building has concrete walls with a south-facing façade that overlooks the sea and is faced with blue ceramic tile. The Auditorium stands at the highest spot in Teulada and affords views over Moraira town centre on the coast and a stunning landscape of terraced vineyards. It hosts an extensive variety of different cultural events throughout the year.
The remodeling of the Windmill to provide it with all the necessary mechanisms for its perfect operation, is a unique opportunity to know one of the most characteristic buildings of the Spanish East, since most of them are in a ruinous state. Its traditional façade and the natural environment that frames it, on a small hill, form a unique picture that makes the visitor go back to the days when their blades turned with the wind to grind the grain and obtain the flour that supplied the whole town.
The Portalet is the name that is known to the door that leads to the square of the Church from its back side. Constitutes the second entrance of the square, besides the Church-street. This door was one of the entrances to the walled core upon which was built the first village, surrounding the Church.This space was in medieval times a walled enclosure conformed by slopes of the highest ground, the walls of the temple and the back of the houses. Walking from the square through the Portalet, it becomes a beautiful viewpoint seeing the Montgó, the Cape of Sant Antoni, the Bay of Xàbia and the hills that rise to the Puig Llorença.
The bay of Calpe with the vigilant rock of Ifach has been a landscape admired and appreciated by the different cultures that have been part of this land since ancient times. The Roman site of Baños de la Reina in Calpe is an exceptional coastal enclave. Located in front of a bay with calm waters and sheltered by the Peñón de Ifach, it still submerges its rocky arms in the crystalline waters of Mare Nostrum today. The sea and salt were the basis and the sustenance of the ancient Roman colonists, giving rise to fluid commercial exchanges that there is evidence of. This activity produced a small population who built their houses on the coastal dunes, resulting in selective and diversified urban planning. After the passage of time and centuries of neglect, the popular imagination inherited the ancient legacy, identifying the pools as the “baths of the Moorish queen”, which is how the site got its name. The existence of some drainage passages, now closed, adds to the myth: these were the tunnels that reached a mysterious palace which the “Moorish queen” used to get to her coastal bath. This popular belief is also an important part of the cultural heritage of the site. The Baños de la Reina site consists of three parts: 1. Roman Vicus The Roman site of Baños de la Reina is a coastal enclave that is known for its magnificent architectural design and its mosaics, one of the most important collections of its kind in all of Roman Hispania. Although only 25% of its surface has been excavated so far, it is enough to discern the magnitude of this Roman villae fitted with all kinds of luxuries 2,000 years ago. The pools carved out of the coastal rock, used to supply fresh fish, led to the name of the enclave which is still used today. During the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, they constructed the first homes, a small thermal complex known as the “Muntanyeta thermal baths”, and an industrial area which features the construction of a unique waterwheel carved out of the rock that supplied drinking water for the area. At the end of the 3rd century AD, a luxurious villae with a circular patio was constructed, fitted with an extraordinary private thermal complex. Finally, it is during the 5th and 6th century when traces of conversion to Christianity appear in this key navegation point with the construction of a modest church with a baptistry with a Greek cross and an adjacent cemetery. 2. Muntanyeta Thermal Complex As a result of the remodeling of the coastal breakwater in 1993, the remains of this small 500 m2 thermal complex, known as the “Muntanyeta thermal baths”, were uncovered. Among the discoveries documented during its excavation, various pools had survived, as well as a natatio with cold water (frigidarium), which was accessed using three steps. Next to this were various ovens responsible for maintaining the appropriate temperatures in the hot rooms (caldarium) and warm rooms (tepidarium). The heating system developed by Roman engineers used hollow floors elevated by columns of bricks (pilae) and walls with air chambers made from ceramic tubes (tubuli) that facilitated the circulation of heat through the different rooms and kept them heated. Joining these areas was a room with a floor formed by spikes (opus spicatum), as well as other complementary spaces intended for recreation, which were richly decorated with grey marble plates from Algeria. 3. The Roman Fish Farms of Baños de la Reina The existence of large basins in the sea, carved into sandstone known as “pedra tosca”, and popularly known as the “baths of the Moorish queen”, led to the naming of the entire archaeological site. The complex, carved from the same coast, consists of a large rectangular tank with an area of 165 m2. Its interior was subdivided by natural stone walls, creating six pools with an opening in each one to connect them. Sea water entered through four canals, also carved from the rock, which allowed the free flow of water to all of the pools. These canals were covered with perforated gates, which allowed water to flow while preventing blockages and the escape of the fish inside. While these fish farms or piscinae are associated with the farming of live fish, we cannot rule out its possible use as an aquatic garden in order to observe marine beauty, just like other Roman villae in the Tyrrhenian Sea, where these facilities, which were expensive to build and costly to maintain, represented the power and social prestige of their owner.
This building, a wind-powered flour mill characteristic of the Marina Alta region that dates back to the mid-19th century, is located at the western end of the Baños de la Reina archaeological site. The building has a cylindrical floor plan, which rises above the natural floor. It was constructed from worked natural stone and joined with plenty of lime mortar, forming a thick wall. Its various peculiarities will make this building surprise you.
In 1272, the king James I gave a consent to Guillem Ponç de Vilafranca in order to build a castle or tower on the ‘Peniella’ rock, with a territory between the castles of Alcoy and Penàguila dominions, inside the settlements of Penella and Forminyà. The architectural complex was built on a high point, very precipitous at the north and west sides. The buildings at east and south sides were built on a graded soil, while the tower and rectangular construction, that still stand, were built directly on the rock. The restoration of this monument, started in 2003 and finished in 2006 and has allowed the conservation of one of the rare witnesses of a convulsive and socioeconomical unsettled age.
The hill called of the ‘El Castell’ is located at the highest point of the mountain called ‘Penyeta Blanca’. This location has witnessed several settlements from the Iberian age, the Muslim Rule and the Christian conquest. Evidence from Iberian culture are just several archaeological pieces found on the ground surface. Although, from the Islamic period (11Th, 12Th, 13Th centuries) there remains a wall possibly related to the kind of city wall used to protect people and animals from those dangerous times. The Christian conquest reinforced the importance of this hill as a defensive position. The Muslim ‘Hûsun’ (castle) was converted in an emphatic gothic-military keep in the first years of the 14Th century, under the rule of Roger de Llúria. This building shows a square base, on an irregular surface. Inside, a permanent exhibition about its history is shown. From the same age some wall remains can be seen, on the high side of the hill. These buildings have been interpreted as foundations of other disappeared buildings. In the mid of the 15Th century the Earl of Cocentaina gave orders to build a round tower for accommodate defence and artillery. The raison d’etre of the overall architecture from the 14Th and 15Th centuries, is related with defense and communication with other needs of other fortifications as means to warn the population of enemy invasion,. The rectangular structure with ‘tapial’ walls (mud wall) called ‘Bassa del Moro’ (Moorish pool) located in the far south side, should not be part of the defensive system, as it was related with the irrigation system from the Muslim age.
Tower located on one of the small hills on which sits the town of Monóvar. Of square plant, with four decreasing bodies. Good example of exempt tower, without church, or attached town hall, dedicated exclusively to give the time. It is a type of construction unusual in the southern Valencian lands, but that can be related to the bell-towers exempt from Catalan Gothic. The clock tower was built in the eighteenth century, specifically the year 1734. It is an exempt tower whose construction is intended, by the civil authorities, to clearly indicate the signs of municipal power against those of ecclesiastical power. It should be noted that until the seventeenth century the clock that governed the life of the monoveros was installed in the bell tower of the previous parish church. The uniqueness of the Monóvar clock tower lies in the fact that it is an exempt tower whose sole purpose is to house the clock of the city and its bells. According to notarial document dated May 12, 1734, the tower was made in the place occupied by the zamoha, Castilianized voice of the Arabic "sauum'a" which means climbing and also serves to name the minaret. This is not strange if one takes into account the strong core of the Islamic population that existed in Monóvar until 1609, together with the conservation of the place name "zamoha" until well into the 18th century. All this leads one to suppose that the tower was probably erected on the same site where the minaret was raised. Being a place where the natural elevation of the land favors the distribution of sound in a larger area. The tower was completed in October 1734 and its total cost was 329 pounds. The same document contributes the author of the work: Manuel Terol, Alicante master stonemason member of the most important dynasty of stonemasons of the eighteenth century in our land. The clock tower is 18 meters high. It is square and consists of four bodies, decreasing in size as they rise. It is masonry except for the entry and start, where several courses of stone ashlars were placed. In the second body the sundial is arranged and, above, the mechanic. The last two bodies, pierced by arches, house the bells. In that area the angles are chamfered and reinforced with small buttresses. A simple decoration with balls, old scurialense roots, appears in the last body, which ends with the characteristic dome blue glazed tile and a weather vane.
Public fountains, found in the streets or squares of many towns, are a distinctive element of traditional society. When there was no drinking water service at home, the neighbors came to these places to get water, becoming places of meeting and sociability. The Fuente de la Peña has had several locations and denominations. Appears reviewed for the first time as a source of Calvary in 1761, located in this same place. In 1868 it was moved to the facade of the confluence of San Pedro and Ramón y Cajal streets, until in 1875 it returned to this place, where we are. At present the fountain has lost its original use as a supply, becoming an ornamental and distinctive element of our heritage. Adjoining this fountain was built in 1880 a house intended for the inn, and is where the Wagner Theater and the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium are currently located.
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