Marbella old town orange-tree square
— a courtyard the orange trees built.
Not only on a wall.
Marbella old town orange-tree square, 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 small white-walled square in the casco antiguo, ringed by bitter Seville orange trees that come into bloom in late winter and scent the whole quarter. A Renaissance fountain at the centre, the old town hall along one side, a tiny stone chapel on another. Café chairs spill across the cobbles in the warm months. Nobody hurries here.
The place, in three passes.
Plaza de los Naranjos was laid out shortly after the Catholic Monarchs took Marbella in 1485, at the centre of the medieval casco antiguo on Spain's Costa del Sol, in Málaga province, Andalusia. The square holds three Renaissance buildings: the Casa Consistorial, the town hall begun in 1568, the small Ermita de Santiago chapel, and the Casa del Corregidor. Bitter Seville orange trees give the plaza its name and its shade. The old town sits a few hundred metres inland from the Mediterranean, white-washed and walled, on a hillside below La Concha mountain.
The orange trees in the plaza are bitter varieties, the kind used for English marmalade. They flower in late February and March, when the azahar blossom carries across the whole quarter at night. By autumn the fruit hangs heavy and green-orange. Marbella's old town keeps a mild climate through every season, with January lows rarely below 8°C and August highs near 30°C, sheltered from the Atlantic weather by the Sierra Blanca rising behind the town.
The plaza sits a short walk from the Avenida del Mar, inside the surviving line of the Moorish walls. Cafés set tables under the orange trees from spring through October. The town hall and the chapel open for visits on weekday mornings. The square is pedestrian-only, reached on foot through narrow lanes from Plaza de la Iglesia or Calle Carmen. Most day visitors arrive midday from Málaga, about an hour east along the AP-7 coastal motorway.
