Puente Nuevo

Ronda sits on a plateau split by El Tajo, a gorge 120 metres deep, and the Puente Nuevo spans it in three arches of pale stone. It took forty years to build and finished in 1793, and nothing else in Spain looks like it.

There are two completely different photographs here. From the town side you shoot along the bridge with the houses balanced on the cliff edge behind. From the Mirador de Aldehuela, and better still from the path that drops below the bridge, you shoot up at the whole span with the gorge underneath — this is the frame that makes people book Ronda in the first place.

The path down is steep and gravelly and takes fifteen minutes each way. It is worth every one of them, and it is where the light is best in the late afternoon when the gorge walls go gold.