Antequera

Antequera lies in Málaga province in Andalusia, at a central position between Málaga, Granada, Córdoba and Seville. This crossroads location helped the city become a commercial centre, but its history begins in a much older landscape. On the northern outskirts stand the megalithic monuments of Menga and Viera, while El Romeral lies outside the town. Together with the nearby Peña de los Enamorados and El Torcal, they form an exceptional record of prehistoric construction.

Under the Nasrid emirate of Granada, Antequera was a fortified frontier town. In 1410 a Castilian army led by Ferdinand of Trastámara took it after a siege, and its Muslim inhabitants were compelled to leave. The town remained exposed to frontier warfare until the Castilian conquest of Málaga and Granada at the end of the fifteenth century.

In the sixteenth century Antequera's fertile vega, watered by the Guadalhorce, was an important cereal-growing district supplying Málaga. At a crossroads between major Andalusian cities, crafts and trade added to its agricultural wealth. Churches, convents and palaces changed the townscape over the following centuries.