Our first day in the town was spent as a Tourist, visiting the Castle, Palacio, bullring, mercado and the Basilica.
First stop was at the San Marcos Castle. It looks like a castle, and is called a castle but once inside you realise its much more – a 13th century fort built on a mosque, a christian church added on and a bodega, influenced by the Romans, Phoenicians, Andalucians and Christian King’s and Dukes. Finally the Caballero Group (wine merchants) took the building over in the last century and modernised it so that it’s now an Asset of Cultural Importance.
So in summary, its a castle, a mosque, a church, a Bodega and a beautiful building!
Next we wandered around the Aranibar Palacio and learned the history of El Puerto de Santa Maria, an important port and commercial city located at the mouth of a river coming from the sherry triangle, passing Cadiz and onto America. With this trade came money, and traders who had money to build large Palacial houses, creating a town known as “The city of a hundred palaces”.
The houses were built around a central courtyard, on three floors with a mezzanine, and opposite to British or colonial houses, the servants lived on the top floor and storage was on the ground floor with living accommodation on the first and second floors. Many palaces included a tower, a chapel and wine cellars. The Aranibar Palace is one such house made of limestone, decorated in Spanish marble and walnut and mahogany from America.
Then we walked around to look at the exterior of the bullring, a pretty modern looking building that was built between 1877 and 1880, a 60 sided polygon with a diameter of 99 meters, owned by the local council and still operating today.
Then we mooched around the local market before looking at the Basilica and Plaza Espana, indulging in tapas and sherry and watching the antics of the storks nesting on the Basilica parapet.
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