Category: Spain

Ronda, a stunning town on a split plateau in Andalusia’s Serranía de Ronda, has inspired many ecstatic descriptions. For the Damascus writer Ismail Abu’l-Feda (1273-1331), famous for e.g. documenting Muslim campaigns against Christian crusaders, Ronda was “an elegant, aspiring city for which the clouds serve as a turban and the towers as a scabbard” (not an exact translation), while Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), a German-language poet from Prague, wrote: “an elegant, aspiring city for which the clouds serve as a turban and the towers as a scabbard” (not an exact translation), while Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), a German-language poet from Prague, wrote: “I have searched everywhere for the ‘city of dreams’ and found it here in Ronda.” Not surprisingly, the city’s tourist industry often advertises Ronda as a ciudad soñada”, a dreamed-of city or a city of dreams.