Casares pueblo blanco cascading down the hill
— white houses spilling toward the valley.
Not only on a wall.
Casares pueblo blanco cascading down the hill, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A pueblo blanco above the Genal valley in western Málaga province, about an hour by road from the coast at Estepona. The houses stack down the hillside under the ruins of a Moorish castle and the church of the Encarnación. Birthplace of Blas Infante, the father of Andalusian nationalism, born here in 1885. The whitewash is renewed each spring against the summer heat. From the lower road the village reads as one folded sheet of light.
The place, in three passes.
Casares is a small municipality in the Sierra Bermeja foothills of western Málaga province, Andalusia. The old village sits at about 435 metres above sea level, looking down over the Genal valley toward the Mediterranean. By road it is about 20 kilometres from Estepona on the coast and around 110 kilometres from Málaga city. The municipality counts roughly 6,000 residents across the hillside village, the coastal strip, and the Manilva road hamlets. The historic centre is one of the most visited of the Pueblos Blancos route.
The village is built around the remains of a Moorish hilltop castle, an alcazaba whose walls are dated to the late 13th century. Below the castle, the church of Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación occupies the highest plateau; both share the limestone bone of the ridge. The houses below are lime-washed every year, a practice that goes back to at least the Moorish period as a way to keep walls cool and to discourage insects. The result is the shape Casares is known for: white cubes stacking down the slope under two darker stone landmarks.
Most visitors arrive by car from Estepona, climbing the MA-8300 about 20 kilometres into the hills. The road ends at a viewpoint above the village; the lanes inside are stepped and largely closed to cars. A small museum on Blas Infante's life sits in the house where he was born in 1885. The castle ruin is reached on foot through the old town, a steady fifteen-minute climb. Spring and early autumn carry the best light; midsummer afternoons stand still in the heat.
