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MARBELLA, España

Country: Spain
Region: Andalusia (Municipality of Málaga)
Mayor: María Ángeles Muñoz Uriol
Elevation: 0m (0 ft)
Population
- City: 124,332
I have just returned from a holiday in Spain where I visited four places in the Costa del Sol region and Marbella was the first place I came across. It is a place of contrasts. As well as being a very glitzy centre of shopping and business, it has its areas of ugliness filled with tenements and blocks of flats and the lovely Conjunto Antiguo or Old Town which is what I concentrated on. These pictures were taken on Thursday 09th July.
Marbella and the nearby Puerto Banús are important beach resorts of the Costa del Sol. The town is famous for being a playground for the rich and famous. Marbella is famed as an exclusive destination for wealthy tourists from Northern Europe, as well as the well-heeled from the UK, Ireland and Germany. The city is also home to Antonio Banderas, was home to Sean Connery before he moved and was home to Mark Langford before he died in a car crash in April 2007.
The city has been through periods of both Islamic Rule and more recently Spanish rule after the Spaniards re-conquered the city in 1485. It is said that Marbella was established from a small village of about 1000 people in the 1940s which soon changed when Prince Max Egon zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg and his heir Alfonso de Hohenlohe experienced a problem with their Rolls-Royce in the vicinity. Alfonso decided to buy masses of land to grow the city outwards and this was when he started up the Marbella Club Hotel and the tourist business got going.
I hope you enjoy this two-part thread as much as I enjoyed wandering around the old town.