Dolmen de Menga, Andalucía, Spain and Canary IslandsDOLMEN & ROMAN RUINS
On the road again
Our drive was only shortly interrupted as we had to wait since a truck went off the road – so it was a single lane. Otherwise, we saw a lot of olive trees… never ending.
Visiting some older (and newer) Dolmen
- We are overall visiting three sites: all are earth-covered burial mounds built around 2500 BC
- The rediscovering started already in in 1842 when it got first mentioned that a Druid temple was here, 1868 when the Dad studied the Menga cave, he made the first known drawings, then in 1903 the Viera and in 1904 the El Romarel Dolmen were discovered. He convinced his son to come with him and study the caves and in 1905 it got published
- They found the remains of several hundred bodies: they are one of the finest neolithic monuments in Europe and became in 2016 UNESCO World Heritage site
- In midsummer the sun is rising behind the pena de los enamarodos hill to the NW and shines directly in the chamber mouth
Dolmen de Menga & Dolmen de Viera
First, we went in the Visitor info and quickly walked through the museum: it was kind of cool to see on how they did the first drawings when they discovered it. We then started the “Walk” as it is all “one-way” we followed the arrows and you literally walk around both earth mounds completely before you come to the entrance (no going directly into the entrance: you would go against the arrows).
You walk into the earth mound and if you look on the sides and tops you are amazed at the huge square stone slabs they moved here: when you think about on where the stone blocks come from it is amazing engineering
Dolmen Viera: you know if you only look at is as a cave, it is not so amazing – as it is a long narrow hallway – but the slabs are cool even they are buried.
Dolmen Menga: already from the outside you can see the gigantic slabs, and this one is 25m, long, 4 m high and made of 32 large slabs, the largest weighing 180 tonnes. As well there are support beams in there. You can already see the huge gigantic ones at the entrance. At the end is a gigantic well we couldn’t really figure out what it was for. As we are inside only Paul and me – the lady walks in and said you have to have the mask on (seriously she was like 10 m away from us and no-one was around) – but she let the group after us go in with no masks ?!?!? I mean I get the mask policy, but why do we need to wear one if it is only Paul and me is beyond me. Nevertheless – this was one huge and amazing Dolmen.
Tholos of El Romeral
As it is only 1 km out of our way we decided to drive there too, this one was a bit different: as the walls were made of small stones (not slabs) but the ceiling was still of slabs and in the back,we were ending up in Cupolla made of small stones. The guy there told us that this one is only 1500 years old – guess compared to the others it’s “new”.
Driving through Olive country
We continue our drive and hope that the sun stays out so we can have a relaxing afternoon: one more hour of driving with sun and clouds in a nice little country side setting and we arrive at the:
Relaxing around the pool in our B&B
the couple is supper nice and we discover that they actually only have one room: they gave us a thorough tour and a lot of info about what to do in Cordoba (more than we needed). Finally, we had time for coffee in the sun shine on the loungers and relax-time until Paul decided it is time to wash the car – then a bit more relaxing in the sun: only downside there are always some clouds coming and going and as soon as we are in the shade it gets cool. So we decided to go to the:
The ruins of a Moorish town: Medina Azahara
- It is the remain of a Moorish palace from 929 for Caliph Abd Al Rahman III who named it after his wife
- 10.000 workers built it, they brought the material as far as from North Africa
- They started to built it, to replace Cordoba: the City of flowers. The legend says that the palace features waterfall walls and lions in cages
- The palace was destroyed by the Berber invaders in 1010
- Today only 10 % are uncovered
Ok we don’t have to understand it all: there is a gigantic visitor info with a huge parking lot and from here you have to take a bus to the town: we wondered why they didn’t build the visitor info right at the town…
Time to wait for the bus: then once there you follow the green arrow: coming in we had a view on the “city” it’s kind of cool with the Moorish gates. Walking down via a ramp going around a corner, which was the Puerta Norte or a controlled access to the palace. the first exciting thing we looked at was the:
- Edificio Basilica: there they had several of the gateways (I think some are reconstructed) but they looked cool, we could see from here the Great Portico: the gates with the red: sadly they closed this section off and we couldn’t walk to them.
- Caballerizas: we walked between a lot of walls and once here, they had a plaque stating that those were the stables for up to 30 horses (What we were wondering is, on how they knew it was a stable and not another house)
- Casa de Ya’far: by the way they hypothecially identified it as the prime ministers house, this was super cool, as it had like a huge reception hall with 3 gates and some cool carvings. From there we went via a courtyard in the supposedly sleeping room (sometimes I wonder How they determine what is what), then we came by what they said is a kitchen and more living quarters as well we were at a viewpoint where we could look down on the gardens: at one time they said they were the largest gardens in Andalusia and upper and a lower garden: we could see some columns from the upper garden towards the left (with the hall of Abd-al Rahman III – which was closed, it is a re-constraction of his throne room) and then to the right with the wall the lower garden.
There was still a lot we couldn’t see because it was marked off, it would have been fun to explore a bit more. We finally walked back up a ramp and had some last sunny views on the medina. I may should mention on the way back we actually saw some more storks.
Supper in the sun
And now a quick stop at the supermarket: except it is complicated to drive in circles: there is a circle, where you can drive straight through the circles and then they also have traffic lights, so only 3 cars can go through from our direction: now my question is what is the purpose of the circle????? How about a normal intersection? Finally, we end up at the supermarket when Gine said right here in the parking lot (ok it was against the driving direction but then who cares – except Paul does). And it was 7 pm, when we finally returned to our B&B for a nice supper in the sun. And yes we decided to sit in the sun until it goes down – except there was one cloud in the sky!!!!
2025-05-22