Castle of San Miguel

An allied navy did more damage to this castle than any invading army. British warships, fighting alongside Spain against Napoleon, bombarded the fortress from the sea — and one tower still stands visibly leaning today, a permanent reminder of friendly fire from two centuries ago.

Phoenician, Roman, Moorish, Christian — all on one hilltop

Phoenician settlers built the first fortification here in the 7th century BC, naming their settlement Seksi. Rome later absorbed and modified it, renaming the town Sexi Firmum Iulium after the Battle of Munda in 45 BC, and Muslim rulers subsequently reworked it again, giving rise to the name Almuñécar itself — from the Arabic for “fortress flanked by mountains.” What survives today is a genuine architectural stack: the oldest surviving elements are two Phoenician-era cisterns, joined by Roman tomb remains and a necropolis-era cistern, all beneath Islamic fortress walls built in the 11th century and later expanded considerably under Nasrid rule, the same dynasty behind Granada’s Alhambra.

Bombed by an ally, then turned into a graveyard

The castle’s most dramatic modern chapter came during the Peninsular War against Napoleon. French forces damaged the fortress as they retreated, following their usual practice of dismantling captured strongholds — but the more striking blow came from Spain’s own ally: British warships shelled Almuñécar and the castle from the sea, toppling one of its towers. That leaning turret, visible today beside the main entrance, has never been fully straightened. Its military usefulness effectively over, the ruined fortress was repurposed as the town’s cemetery from 1830 until 1977 — nearly a century and a half of burials inside what had once been a Phoenician stronghold, before restoration work in the 1980s finally began returning it to public, historical use.

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