Frigiliana

What to See in Frigiliana

The village’s historic quarter, as has been said, is an aesthetic gift that no visitor should decline. Perhaps the heavy tourist traffic, especially during the high season (July, August and September), slightly dilutes this village’s many unique characteristics but that is the price that must be paid when large crowds of tourists gather at a particular place. Don’t think, for that reason, that the village is just a display window directed at the tourist trade; it is a living community that happens to share its idiosyncrasies with people from all over the world but that admirably preserves its cultural and historical treasures for whoever goes to the trouble of discovering them.

The church of San Antonio is the main religious structure in Frigiliana. It was erected in the seventeenth century and modified in the eighteenth. Its interior has three naves separated by pilasters and covered by a wooden roof. The height of the transept is increased by means of a dome with lantern. The church houses a painted wooden carving of Saint Anthony from the eighteenth century. The exterior displays a simple brick façade with a semicircular arch and a three-level bell tower. In one of its niches, the church houses masks of the Twelve Apostles, used in Easter during the Passion Procession.

The former silo of the antiguos pósitos (old granaries) is an eighteenth-century building in the historic quarter. Nowadays, it is occupied by private dwellings and, only the arcades of the main façade remain from the ancient structure. The Palacio de los Condes de Frigiliana (Palace of the Counts of Frigiliana) is a large old house from the sixteenth century, that was later converted into a sugar mill. It is in the Renaissance style and covers 2,000 square metres. The stones of its façade came from the destroyed Arab castle in the locality. At present, it is the only sugar refinery in the area making golden syrup the traditional way. (It should be remembered that this part of La Axarquía based its economy on sugarcane for many years but this crop has now been partly replaced by tropical fruit. The refinery was the place where the sugarcane was converted into a product for consumption).

The chapel of Ecce Homo, also known as the chapel of El Santo Cristo de la Caña, dates from the eighteenth century. It is a very simple, single-nave structure that is accessed through an atrium with a semicircular arch. Part of the walls of the ninth-century Castle of Lizar still stand in the upper part of the village. The fortress’ entrance ramp can also still be seen. The Farmer’s House, from the seventeenth century, was connected to the sugar refinery, but its original function was to serve as a granary, horse stables and storehouse for farm tools. It has a rectangular floor plan and its rooms are distributed around an interior courtyard. It houses the Tourist Office, the Town Library and the Museum of Archaeology (for more info, see tab).

The Tower hides one of Frigiliana’s best-kept secrets: a vase with an engraving –the so-called "Engraving of the Three Cultures." The Christian cross, the Muslim crescent, and the Jewish star appear on the container. The discovery of the vase gave origin to the Festival of the Three Cultures, held in August every year (see below).

Frigiliana’s popular architecture can be seen at its best along El Zacatín and El Darra Streets. They are steep climbs profusely decorated with flowers and flowerpots revealing the Arab city layout –winding roads, secret corners, and adarves, that is, little squares shared by a few houses and belonging to them only. Both streets lead to another gem in town: Barribarto, or the higher part of town. It can only be toured on foot, for its impossibly narrow streets make it impossible to drive. In Barribarto, house walls and mountain slopes become one and the same thing. The area features several viewpoints where you can get views of the whole town, the Mediterranean in the background. In 1982, Frigiliana received the First National Prize for City Embellishment.

The aforementioned menhir or standing stone is the most important of the archaeological sites that have been discovered in Frigiliana. It is from the Algar culture (1,500 B.C.) and is in the Mudéjar neighbourhood. The Phoenician necropolis is at Cerrillo de las Sombras.