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Cartama Holidays
Cartama landscapes and history |
Cartama landscapes and history
Tourist information about Cartama in Spain. Travel to Cartama and let Spain-Holiday.com guide and accommodate you |
Cartama is situated at the foot of two small sierras (Espartales 400m. and Llana 405 m.) which together form the Sierra de Cartama. Its territory is the frontier between the Guadalhorce valley region and La Hoya in the Montes de Málaga, which favours a contrasting aspect with the agricultural plain, which spreads orange trees and vegetables on both sides of the Guadalhorce and the rounded hills on the north of the municipality on which olives and almonds with dispersed houses look out to the valley of the unmistakable landscape of the Montes de Málaga.
Two landscapes which to the west of the Guadalhorce river, in the bowl of the Grande river, its tributary, blend into terraced plots which raise orange and fruit trees from the irrigated land at the bottom of the valley to the top of the undulations and small hills. And when it seems that the lands of the municipality have come to an end at the western extreme, Cártama adds a singular apendage to its physiognomy: the Sierra de Gibralgalia. It is really a complex of hills which the Cartama mountains extend to the heart of the Guadalhorce valley, in the confluence of the municipal regions of Pizarra, Casarabonela and Coín.
If the land is varied, even more so the history of its inhabitants, as this area was occupied by Tartesides and Phoenicians and reached great splendour with the Romans. It seems that the Phoenicians gave the town its first name, known in the primitive settlement as Cartha - meaning hidden city. Later the Romans called it Cartima, converting it into a municipality in the year 195 B.C. and endowing it with powerful defences. During the Roman period it was one of the main towns in the present province of Málaga and its territory must have been very populated judging by the numerous sites discovered. The Cartima baths were famous for their curative properties.
On the peak of the hill on which the chapel of the Remedios was erected, there are still the ruins of a castle, which the Arabs rebuilt later. This not only consolidated and extended the fort, but converted it into one of the main bastions of the defense of Málaga.
In 1485 the castle of Cartama was taken by the Christian troops. The event was immortalized by the carvers in the bas-relief of the Choir in the Cathedral of Toledo.
During the 19th century, the vine formed an important part of the Cartama economy, to the point that it still exists in the toponymy of the area ("Sierra de las Viñas", "Viñas Viejas"), but after the plague of phylloxera, they were substituted by almonds.
The parish church of San Pedro, whose construction date is written on an inscription on the main facade with the year 1502, is situated in the town square, where the orange trees give an Andalusian atmosphere appropriate to the Guadalhorce valley. It consists of three naves with a coffered Mudejar style ceiling.
The reredos, altar and images are of more recent epochs and apart from the wooden choir, don’t have much artistic interest. Outside the church is the quadrangular based tower, with three bodies and crowned with Arab tiles and on each angle there is a type of pinnacle as a decorative element.
On the other hand, the chapel of the Virgen de los Remedios, which occupies the site of an old mosque, is dated in the 16th century, but the actual building is of the 18th century and it has an outside atrium crowned by a belfry and inside, has one nave with a vault over pilasters, the choir with an hexagonal structure and baroque decoration. From the chapel, situated on the peak of the hill on which the town stands, there is a splendid panorama of the valley.
Among other notable buildings is the house called González Narín, and among the public works, a fountain which could be from the 16th or 17th century.
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See a map over Cartama
