Museo Arqueológico — Attraction in Estepona

Only three stars because it is only in Spanish. This is not a big deal, but some of the best bits for me required you to be able to read 16th-century documents in Olde Worlde Spanish.

With good English descriptions, 4 stars.

Even if you can't read Old Spanish, it's worth popping in just to admire the 18th-century gentleman's residence. Magnificent. Not what you expect to see on a holiday to the Costa del Sol.

This is the "Casa del Aljibe" - formerly the Town Hall (still some administrative offices upstairs) and before that a gracious residence with foundations dating back to Moorish times.

It is worth a visit for the building alone, which is built in the typical 18th century style of a rich gentleman's dwelling. You start with a large entrance porch, called a Zaguan. Traditionally these have been considered part of the street rather than the house, and so in the past beggars or vendors might set up there, and people had no compunction about sheltering inside out of the occasional winter rainstorm.

The Zaguan always leads to a central patio, here we have a beautiful example. In the centre is the well leading to the "aljibe" after which the house was named - a very old water storage tank said to date back to Moorish times. If you are not quite sure, Moorish times here in Andalusia refers to the period between 711 and 1492 when the Muslim Caliphs of Cordoba and Emirs of Granada ruled. Over 700 years of Islamic history -

All around the patio at first-floor level is a beautiful balcony, now glassed in but originally open to the patio. This balcony is in fact the corridor giving access to the rooms at that level; a handsome staircase leads up there. Traditionally, the maids lived further up above in the attics, rooms too cold in winter and too hot in summer for the ladies and gentlemen to inhabit!

Here the patio has been enclosed by an attractive glass roof; when the house was first built, this was open to the sky.

The museum is on the ground floor only, with different rooms for different periods. There are loads of interesting exhibits, and if you are a habitué of museums elsewhere, you can guess what the objects are.

The first room is pre-history, Phoenicians and the Roman Conquest. The second one concentrates on the Roman period.

I was very interested in the two rooms looking at the 700+ years of Moorish rule, when the town was "Medina Istibbuna", but the bit that I most enjoyed was an exhibition in the patio of old documents.

There was a typed version of a series of documents dating back to 1502. That first was written just ten years after the army of Queen Isabel and King Fernando (yes, that's right: the ones in the Sky TV series) laid siege to Santa Fe just outside Granada, the Moorish King capitulated, and it was the end of seven centuries of Moorish rule in Spain.

The Spanish King and Queen ordered a castle to be built on the ruins of the Moorish fortress in Estepona, and land to be purchased to build 20 dwellings around it. The aim was clearly to start a Christian town around the castle.

And it was successful, as in 1526 another document shows that there were now 25 or 26 householders living there. These houses formed the first two streets of modern Estepona; they are just down the road from this museum, the Calle Villa and the Calle Castillo on either side of the castle.

Another document describes a legal dispute between Estepona and Marbella in 1618 over grazing rights, particularly pigs and acorns - the famous "jamón de bellota" from acorn-fed pigs already important!

But my favourite was the document of 1617, when a wealthy gentleman of Estepona sets out in a legal document the items that he gave his wife on their marriage, to be her personal possessions. These were:

a chest a mattress 4 sheets a set of bed hangings 2 pillows 1 towel

Only one towel? He wasn't expecting her to go down to the beach then!

I think that you will enjoy seeing this beautiful house and looking at the exhibits. Children will enjoy more the Paleontological museum with dinosaurs by the...

The things we had time to look at were beautiful and we really enjoyed, but as soon as we got out of the 2nd room the person who worked there ( that greeted us at the door and saw the dog in my mums basket) suddenly flipped out and started screaming at us that NO DOGS ALLOWED NO DOGS!! And starting coming towards my mother as if he was going to hit her. That was extremely rude and so much more I don’t even know what to call it !! And there was no sign outside that you couldn’t bring dogs in there, and he saw here before we went in, and in other museums in Spain the dog was allowed to come in with us as long as she stayed...

Don't skip the archeology museum while you're here. Estepona isn't only beach. It's a small museum, only 4 rooms of displays, but if you really like history as I do you could easily spend an hour or more inside.

In case you don't read Spanish make sure to use a phone translator, Google Lens works just fine. All the signage is in Spanish but if you skip reading it you'll miss some really interesting stuff.

They have an amazing collection of pottery. I was hot, tired, and not in the best of moods when I visited and I'm still very happy I went. I plan to return when the weather has...