By Porter Lang
The bridge is the reason to come, and it very nearly didn’t get built. Puente Nuevo spans El Tajo gorge, itself roughly 100 metres deep at that point, with the bridge deck rising about 98 metres above the base of its lowest arch, connecting Ronda’s old Moorish town to the newer quarter across the drop. The first attempt, started around 1734–35, collapsed in 1741, killing roughly 50 people. A second attempt began in 1759 under a different design, and the bridge that actually stands today wasn’t finished until 1793. Fifty-eight years, two architects — Domingo Lois de Monteagudo, then José MartÃn de Aldehuela, who saw it through — and one fatal collapse before this one held.
Walking across it now, on the same pedestrian route locals have used since it opened, that history isn’t obvious. It just looks solid, which is rather the point: it was built specifically so that pedestrians and carts could cross the gorge safely and quickly, after decades of relying on precarious alternatives. Stand at either end and look down instead of across, and the scale becomes clearer fast.
Ronda’s old town, on the Moorish side of the gorge, rewards slow walking more than any single sight. Narrow streets, a bullring among the oldest in Spain, and views out over the surrounding SerranÃa de Ronda that open up unexpectedly at the end of ordinary-looking streets. The newer town across the bridge has its own rhythm — less dramatic, more workaday, and a good place to eat without the bridge-view markup.
Base yourself in the old town if you want to wake up to the gorge, or the newer side if you prefer quieter streets and a short walk to the view rather than a room built around it.
Sephari doesn’t yet have sourced, checked profiles of makers working in Ronda specifically — expect that to develop alongside the wider Andalusian craft coverage we’re building out.
Andalusian makers can find out what’s involved at /sell-with-sephari/