A series of legends prevail regarding the origins of the town, some of which confuse fact with fiction. Some identify Velez with Sexi, capital of the ancient region of Sexitania, while others attribute its founding to Beluz, the Lybian Hercules, insisting that he gave the town his name.

A Christian tradition claims the presence of St. Peter in the town.

Details obtained from archaeological excavations confirm that Velez was inhabited in prehistoric times.

The walls of a Phoenician town have been discovered near the mouth of the River Velez on Los Toscanos Estate, and necropolises have been located on El Jardin and La Noria country estates.

Velez must have been an important urban centre during the Roman era, giving refuge to settlers who had abandoned the coast following the fall of the Empire; however, it was during the Moslem occupation of Spain that the town really acquired renown and importance. In the 13th century, the fortress of Velez, along with Comares and Bentomiz, figured as one of the most important towns in the area corresponding to the present-day province of Malaga; proof of this is the alliance between the Christian King Ferdinand III, known as the Holy, and the Nazari ruler Al-Hamar. An account by the traveller Ibn Batuta (1304-1368) describes Velez as a prosperous town enjoying an active trading relationship with the kingdom of Granada and the cities of the Mediterranean via its commercial port at Mariyya Balis -Atalaya de Velez- (Torre del Mar).

In April 1487, it was captured by the troops of the Catholic Monarchs . The fall of Velez Malaga was crucial to the subsequent surrender of Malaga.

The port of Torre del Mar developed in the wake of the Christian conquest under the protection of the castle -part of whose walls still stand today- of Rui Lopez of Toledo, a distinguished Castilian soldier who was awarded this military enclave in return for his role in the capture of Velez.
The 18th century (1704) saw one of the most important naval battles of the War of Succession. A Franco-Spanish fleet and the combined forces of the English and Dutch navies locked horns in a fierce battle involving 146 ships and almost 50,000 men. The confrontation failed to produce a clear victor and the Anglo-Dutch contingent withdrew to the port of Gibraltar, the French and Spanish heading for Malaga.

Another important episode in Velez’s history occurred during the War of Independence, when retreating Napoleonic troops blew up the town’s walls, which were left practically in ruins.

The village and its municipal area were also affected by the major tremor known as the Andalusian Earthquake on Christmas Day 1884, suffering six mortalities and extensive material damage.

A new stimulus, which was to change forever the whole face of Velez-Malaga, the neighbouring dependency of Torre del Mar and the rest of the municipal area, as well as its inhabitants’ economic activities and way of life, came in the second half of the 20th century, when the progressive development of tourism, which had begun in 1960s, transformed the town into one of the Mediterranean’s leading holiday resorts.

Outstandings Visits
The best place for starting a tour of the monuments in this city, which was designated a Historic-Artistic Complex in 1970, is the Plaza de San Francisco and its environs. The district displays a maze-like street plan that is a heritage of its Arabic past but is the site of the first examples of secular architecture in Vélez-Málaga, despite the fact that the building around which it grew up is the Real Convento de Santiago (Royal Convent of Saint James). .

The Real Convento de Santiago o de San Francisco (Royal Convent of Saint James, or of Saint Francis), founded in 1498, was installed in a mosque that at the behest of the Catholic Monarchs had been consecrated as a parish church. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it underwent such extensive transformations that only the coffered ceiling of the dome over the main chapel remains from the original Mudéjar church.

The present building is the result of reforms carried out in the eighteenth century. Its interior is noteworthy for the chapel of the Buen Pastor (Good Shepherd), which at the present time is occupied by the cofradía (brotherhood) of La Caridad (Charity). The chapel is actually a little church within a church, since it consists of a choir room, presbytery and dome. This space is profusely adorned with such Baroque features as garlands, fruits, mirrors, paintings and gilded gesso artwork. Only one cloister remains of the two that it used to have, and it attracts the attention by its arches and Mudéjar pillars.

The Palacio de Beniel (Beniel Palace) is not far from the Franciscan convent and is without a doubt the most remarkable secular building in the locality. Don Alonso de Molina y Medrano ordered its construction in the early seventeenth century but he died before the work was completed. His nephews inherited it, and after being used for various purposes-even as the Town Hall-it has been for some years now the seat of the Fundación María Zambrano (María Zambrano Foundation). Its architecture is a mishmash of Mudéjar and Manierist with some Renaissance features. The building’s interior is arranged around an elegant courtyard with arches resting on Tuscan columns, and the exterior is noteworthy for the marble façade with the coats of arms of the Molina Medrano family, wrought iron balconies and an upper gallery that was originally two towers.

From the Plaza de San Francisco the street of the same name leads to the Casa de Cervantes (Cervantes House), an aristocratic mansion with a lintelled façade and an interior courtyard with a gallery supported by triple semicircular arches that rest on brick columns. Tradition has it that Miguel de Cervantes stayed in this house in 1591 when he visited Vélez-Málaga in his capacity as tax collector. Friar Alonso de Santo Tomás, supposedly the illegitimate son of Felipe IV and who would become the Bishop of Málaga, was born in this house in the seventeenth century.

The Plaza de la Gloria opens off from the southwest side of the Palacio de Beniel, and from there we can follow the route to the San Cristóbal hill, where the ermita de la Virgen de los Remedios (Hermitage of the Virgin of the Remedies, the local patron saint) is situated. This site commands a view of the Vélez-Málaga landscape. The church was built in the mid-seventeenth century and later remodelled. It has a Latin cross floor plan and three naves covered by barrel vaults. The “camarín” of the Virgin, which has a square base and is decorated in the Rococo style, holds mural paintings depicting, among other personages, Felipe IV and María Luisa de Saboya.

If we return to the Casa de Cervantes and there take Calle Cilla we will arrive at the Cruz del Arrabal (El Arrabal cross), a votive chapel dedicated to the cross that commemorates the entrance of Fernando the Catholic into the city on 3 May 1487. This is a small temple eight metres in height, which is opened in the front by a semicircular arch. The interior contains nothing but a simple cross and is covered by a dome.

By going along Calle Arroyo San Sebastián from the Cruz del Arrabal we arrive at the ermita de San Sebastián (Saint Sebastian hermitage), which was founded in 1487 by the Catholic Monarchs in homage to the royal groom Sebastián Fernández who, tradition states, saved the life of Fernando the Catholic during a confrontation with the Muslims during the capture of the city. Legend or not, the coat of arms of Vélez-Málaga depicts the scene with the protagonist of this story lying on the ground and the king on horseback in a defensive posture over him. Not many elements remain of this hermitage’s original structure, only a pointed arch supported by sturdy pillars in what was the main chapel.

Whether we start from the Cruz del Arrabal or from the Casa de Cervantes we must travel to the Plaza de la Constitución, better known as Plaza de San Juan. This is the site of the parroquia de San Juan Bautista (Saint John the Baptist parish church), founded by the Catholic Kings and enlarged in 1499 and 1564. It has a basilica floor plan and consists of three naves with a transept. Only the imposing bell tower and part of the exterior remain from its original Gothic-Mudéjar style, however, since when it was extensively remodelled in 1853, its fine coffered ceiling was covered with false vaults, and the ogive arches were converted into semicircular arches. The church is of almost monumental dimensions and although some of its chapels exhibit Baroque decorations the architecture of the structure itself imparts something of a cold sensation. The paintings by the Vélez painter Francisco Hernández are noteworthy.

El Pósito is near the San Juan church. This was formerly the warehouse where grain, mainly wheat, was stored in the event of bad harvests. It was built in the mid-eighteenth century and consists of two floors. The upper was used as a granary and the lower floor was a market. The façade is divided into sections separated by attached columns. After a period of disuse the building was converted into dwellings, with the interior arches being filled in, and now that it is again uninhabited, awaiting a renovation and a new use.

If we continue the tour along Calle de las Tiendas we can observe the traces of the ancient city walls, of which some of the towers remain, and will arrive at the fuente de Fernando VI (Fountain of Fernando VI), which was previously located on the Plaza de San Juan. It is built of marble and has four spouts in the shape of the faces of mythological animals. The fountain bears an inscription that says: “In the reign of his Catholic Majesty Don Fernando the Sixth...1758.” There is a curious fact that casts the construction date into doubt, however, and it is that one of the coats of arms is that of Felipe II. This detail, taken together with its Classic structural style and some of its decorative features, points more to the sixteenth than to the eighteenth century as the date of the fountain’s construction.

Going down Calle de las Tiendas we arrive at a small plaza that is the site of the mid-eighteenth century capilla de la Virgen de la Piedad (Virgin of Piety chapel). The chapel is framed by a large semicircular arch and flanked by Corinthian pilasters that support a curved pediment. Its façade is surrounded by a combined terrace and tribunal, which seems to have been linked to the processional route. The complex is crowned by a lantern dome, and the images housed in it, of Nuestro Padre Jesús El Rico (Our Father Jesus “The Rich”) and Nuestra Señora de la Piedad, are recent works.

Let us go from Calle de las Tiendas to the Calle de las Monjas to visit the convento de Nuestra Señora de Gracia (Our Lady of Grace convent, better known as Las Clarisas). It was founded in 1503 in a building that was entirely inadequate for it and the religious community was transferred in 1555 to its present building, which would not be spared the customary renovations. In this case, however, they were necessary as the Lisbon earthquake in 1755 and that of Andalusia in 1884 seriously damaged the building.

The cloister and the church are the most artistically valuable premises. The former, from the sixteenth century, and with a rectangular floor plan, is surrounded by a two-story gallery with semicircular arches supported by columns, but we cannot visit it since it is a cloistered religious order. The church was built in the second half of the eighteenth century. It is in the Baroque style, and although its architectural structure is very simple its walls are very profusely decorated with features of all kinds.

Now we must walk to the Plaza de las Carmelitas, where the we will find the Convento de Jesús, María y José o de las Carmelitas, (Convent of Jesus, Mary and Jose, or the Carmelite Convent, since the nuns who live here belong to the Order of Carmel). The convent complex consists of two parts, the church and the convent house. In the interior of the latter can be seen two courtyards, called the Courtyard of the Flowers and the Main Courtyard. The church was built between 1738 and 1745. Its stone façade is of Manierist design, despite the fact that that style fell into disuse in the early seventeenth century.

The interior is built along very simple lines and consists of a single nave with a front that has been converted into a “camarín” in which the statue of the Virgen del Carmen (Virgin of Mount Carmel) is kept. The camarín (niche) is the point where the decoration is emphasised and becomes more complex in the Baroque fashion. The eighteenth century Granadino School fresco paintings are outstanding. The convent houses a very peculiar item: a small wooden skull carved by San Juan de la Cruz (Saint John of the Cross).

We must return once again to the Plaza de la Constitución in order to continue along Puerta Real de la Villa to the neighbourhood of the same name, from where we can begin the trip along the murallas medievales (medieval city walls). Only a few sections of them remain and not all of those have preserved their original masonry construction since they have undergone a number of restorations to keep them from being totally lost. The walls, with several interspersed towers, encircled the entire medina (medieval city centre) and had four gates. The only gate that remains, however, is the Puerta Real de la Villa (Royal Gate of the City), so called because the Catholic Monarchs entered Vélez-Málaga through it in 1487. It is a rectangular brick tower with semicircular arches providing access. By zigzagging north through this neighbourhood, which is the original city centre, we will arrive at the Santa María de la Encarnación church.

The Iglesia de Santa María de la Encarnación (Saint Mary of the Incarnation church, also known as Santa María la Mayor, or Greater Saint Mary) was built over the old congregational mosque between the late fifteenth century and the early sixteenth century. This church consists of three naves separated by rectangular pillars on which rest pointed arches. The naves are covered by Mudéjar roof frames. The Renaissance-style altarpiece of the main altar is the most remarkable feature of the church’s interior. The Cristo de los Vigías (Christ of the Watchmen) is in this space. The square-based tower is separate from the church in the fashion of mosque minarets. By way of the Epistle Side nave one enters a porticoed gallery with columns and horseshoe arches that commands a magnificent view of the city.

Near this church, on the highest point in the city (137 metres above sea level), stands the Fortaleza or Alcazaba (Fortress, in Arabic and Spanish). It is now encircled by the neighbourhoods of La Villa and Arroyo San Sebastián. There are archaeological remains that confirm that construction began on the fortress in the tenth century, but it would not be until the early thirteenth century that it acquired a certain amount of importance. It is mentioned in connection with the treaty between the Nazarite king of the city, Alhamar, and Fernando III, and during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it played an important role in the region. After the conquest by the Catholic Monarchs is was used, successively, as a royal residence, command headquarters, barracks, jail and Town Hall.

The building was not used from the beginning of the eighteenth century until the French invasion, and when they abandoned it the Napoleonic troops left it in a deplorable condition. In the early twentieth century it had been totally forgotten and was being used as a source of stone for other buildings. Finally, in the 1960’s the Town Hall began a half-hearted restoration by rebuilding the Torre del Homenaje (Homage Tower) and several sections of its walls. Still waiting for a serious restoration project, the Fortaleza at the present time offers a pseudo-romantic view of a glorious past in ruins and, of course, is the best vantage point in the city.

By going down Calle Granada we will arrive at the Hospital de San Juan de Dios o de San Marcos (Hospital of Saint John or God, or of Saint Mark), which was founded by the Catholic Monarchs and granted to the Order of San Juan de Dios in the seventeenth century. The church has two naves, one of them with a lowered vault and a small eighteenth century “camarín”. Despite the numerous renovations it has undergone it preserves a beautiful brick Mudéjar courtyard with a low gallery of semicircular arches. At this time it is a residence for senior citizens.

Upon leaving this ancient hospital we will continue along Calle Tenerías and Calle Cruz del Cordero, the old Granada road, to get to the Capilla de la Cruz del Cordero (El Cordero Cross chapel). Like the El Arrabal chapel it is a commemorative structure, a small and very simple brick temple housing a simple wooden cross.