Costa del Sol Map

The Costa del Sol is more than the resort strip it is known for. Málaga at the centre is a working city with three major museums; east toward Nerja the mountains close in and the coast turns to cliff and cove; west it is continuous development to Estepona. Ten minutes inland in any direction the landscape becomes white villages and sierra.

What is plotted on the Costa del Sol map

The map carries 31 places on this coast: 8 historic sites, 6 towns, 4 natural parks, 4 viewpoints, 4 museums, 3 villages, 1 theme park, 1 marina. They span roughly 123 km in a straight line, from Sierras of Tejeda, Almijara and Alhama Natural Park in the north to Estepona in the south.

The Costa del Sol coast, north to south

Every marker on the map, in the order you would meet it driving south. The distance is a straight line from the place above it.

Place	Type	From previous
Sierras of Tejeda, Almijara and Alhama Natural Park The Sierra Tejeda is named after yew trees that have almost vanished. What remains is the southernmost yew stand in	Natural park	—
Montes de Málaga Natural Park The pine forest above Málaga was planted in the 1930s to stop the floods that vineyard clearance had caused since	Natural park	44 km
Frigiliana	Village	42 km
Caves of Nerja Five boys chasing bats found the Caves of Nerja in 1959. The seal paintings inside may be the oldest art	Natural park	6 km
Torre de Maro Five 16th-century watchtowers stand along twelve kilometres of cliff. They fought nothing — they relayed smoke by day and fire	Historic site	2 km
Balcón de Europa Nerja’s famous viewpoint was a cannon battery, and the king credited with naming it probably didn’t. The archives say the	Viewpoint	4 km
Nerja	Town	0 km
Ronda	Town	115 km
Museum Jorge Rando Spain’s only Expressionist museum sits in a working-class Málaga barrio beside a 19th-century monastery — and charges nothing.	Museum	66 km
Gibralfaro Gibralfaro means ‘rock of the lighthouse’ — named for a Phoenician beacon. Its 40-metre rock-cut well is why the 1487	Viewpoint	1 km
Museo Picasso Málaga Digging the foundations for Málaga’s Picasso museum uncovered a Phoenician wall, a Roman garum factory and a Nasrid palace. All	Museum	1 km
Carmen Thyssen Museum One collector, one century, one region: the Carmen Thyssen shows how 19th-century painters manufactured the visual idea of Andalusia.	Museum	0 km
Málaga	Town	0 km
Alcazaba of Málaga Málaga’s 11th-century fortress was built partly out of the Roman theatre at its feet — which then vanished until 1951.	Historic site	1 km
Málaga Cathedral Málaga’s cathedral is missing a tower. A plaque blames the American Revolution; parish records point to a road and an	Historic site	0 km
Museo de Málaga Andalusia’s largest museum was created in 1973 and opened in 2016 — its collections spent decades in storage waiting for	Museum	0 km
Bajondillo Cave A cave under Torremolinos moved the arrival of modern humans in Western Europe back 5,000 years — and started a	Historic site	13 km
Mijas Pueblo	Village	13 km
Castillo de Colomares A retired doctor and two bricklayers built the world’s largest Columbus monument by hand in seven years, with no blueprints.	Historic site	6 km
Benalmádena Stupa Europe’s tallest stupa was the last project of a Bhutanese master who died four months before it opened — and	Historic site	1 km
Sierra Blanca La Concha shields Marbella and creates its microclimate — and generates more mountain rescues than anywhere else on the Costa	Natural park	29 km
Fuengirola	Town	25 km
Bioparc Fuengirola Fuengirola’s old zoo was demolished in 1999 and rebuilt without cages — one of Europe’s first zoo-immersion parks.	Theme park	0 km
Sohail Castle Sohail Castle is named after Canopus, the star ships from Africa steered by — and after Suel, the Roman town	Historic site	1 km
Marbella	Town	23 km
Calaburras Lighthouse The seabed below Calaburras holds two thousand years of shipwrecks. The lighthouse above became Spain’s first to guide aircraft as	Viewpoint	22 km
Marbella Lighthouse A light has burned at Marbella since 1864, but the tower moved in 1974 — the resort had grown so	Viewpoint	22 km
Puerto Banús Puerto Banús was meant to be high-rise blocks. The architect talked the developer out of it and built a fake	Marina	6 km
Basílica de Vega del Mar Specialists still disagree on whether this basilica had one apse or two, and which century built it. The marble immersion	Historic site	4 km
Casares The man who designed Andalusia’s flag and wrote its anthem was born in Casares in 1885 and killed in 1936.	Village	25 km
Estepona	Town	12 km

By what you are looking for

Historic site (8): Torre de Maro, Alcazaba of Málaga, Málaga Cathedral, Bajondillo Cave, Castillo de Colomares, Benalmádena Stupa, Sohail Castle, Basílica de Vega del Mar

Town (6): Nerja, Ronda, Málaga, Fuengirola, Marbella, Estepona

Natural park (4): Sierras of Tejeda, Almijara and Alhama Natural Park, Montes de Málaga Natural Park, Caves of Nerja, Sierra Blanca

Viewpoint (4): Balcón de Europa, Gibralfaro, Calaburras Lighthouse, Marbella Lighthouse

Museum (4): Museum Jorge Rando, Museo Picasso Málaga, Carmen Thyssen Museum, Museo de Málaga

Village (3): Frigiliana, Mijas Pueblo, Casares

Theme park (1): Bioparc Fuengirola

Marina (1): Puerto Banús

Which comarca each place sits in

This coast is not one administrative unit. These are the comarques the mapped places belong to, which is also how local signage and bus networks are organised.

Costa del Sol Occidental (4): Mijas Pueblo, Fuengirola, Marbella, Estepona
La Axarquía (2): Frigiliana, Nerja
Serranía de Ronda (1): Ronda
Málaga (1): Málaga

How to read the map

Each marker is coloured by place type, so a glance tells you whether a point is a beach, a town or a natural park. Clicking a marker opens its name, type and a link to the full page. The checkbox bar above the map filters by type: untick everything except beaches to see only the coastline, or leave only historic sites to plan a day inland. Markers cluster when zoomed out, so a number in a circle means several places sit close together — zoom in and the cluster splits.

For the coast written up as a single read, see the Costa del Sol guide or the region page.

How to use this map

The map is scoped to this coast: the pins are the destinations on it, not the whole of Spain. The filters above narrow it further — show only beaches, or only coves, viewpoints, castles, museums or natural parks.

Town guides on this coast

For the coast in words, see the full guide, or the region page for its destinations by area. Every Spanish coast is on the main CostaMap map.

Every place we have mapped on the Costa del Sol

53 towns, beaches, coves and landmarks, kept up to date automatically.