Spain's mountain eyrie — the gorge city where bullfighting was born
Ronda sits on a dramatic plateau in the Serranía de Ronda mountains, bisected by the 120-metre El Tajo gorge with its 18th-century Puente Nuevo bridge straddling the void. It was here that Pedro Romero codified the rules of modern bullfighting in the 1780s, and the Real Maestranza bullring — the oldest in Spain — still stands at the gorge edge. Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles both kept returning.
Ronda was a Roman city called Arunda, then a Moorish taifa kingdom that held out against the Reconquista until 1485, when it fell to Ferdinand and Isabella after a 15-day siege. The Arab baths survive, and the old Moorish quarter (La Ciudad) still retains its narrow medina-like streets and minaret-turned-church tower.