Marbella History

Marbella Old Town

In the 90's, Marbella began to be recognized as a "Universal City". Infrastructures, Cultural Centers, sporting installations, Municipal Offices, Golf Courses, New Avenues, Parks, etc and the encouraging of investors to the city have made Marbella a city desired by all. It is awarded with national and international prizes for the security, cleanliness and cordiality of the people.

Marbella has a rich history.

Archaeological excavations have been made in the mountains around Marbella. Objects and human remains found from the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages on the mountainsides which shows that there were already human settlements on the Sierra Blanca Mountain in Marbella.

There are also remains of Phoenician.There were Phoenician settlements in the 7th Century BC in the Rio Real area and later Carthaginensian settlements.

According to historians, the town of Marbella was founded around 1600 BC by colonists of Roman. They called it Salduba, which means Salt City. Salduba was much more a trading post and agricultural settlement than a fishing village due to its strategic situation on the Augustus Highway.

Muslims arrived in this part of southern Spain in the first decade of the 6th century and they called the town Marbil-la. They built a fortress here in the style of the Damascus califate and a defensive wall to protect their settlement from attack by Christian forces.

The Muslim town finally fell into the hands of the Catholic Monarchs - who were carrying out the Christian reconquest of Spain - in 1485, when King Fernando received the keys directly from the defeated calif, Mohamed Abuenza. From then onwards the town has been called Marbella. The original Muslim design of the old town is still evident today.

In the 1940s, Marbella was a small village with only 900 inhabitants but this changed when (Prince Max Egon zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg) and his heir Alfonso of Hohenlohe experienced a problem with their Rolls-Royce car in the area.

Alfonso was so impressed with Marbella. He decided to buy land commercially, marketing the area as a tourist destination. In 1954 he opened the Hotel Marbella Club which, in spite of its name, was far from being a conventional tall and impersonal building but rather was a resort with traditional low houses among 23.000 trees. He convinced other European families to move to Marbella and enjoy luxury of Marbella.