Zahara de la Sierra reservoir overlook
— a white village holding its hill above the water.
Not only on a wall.
Zahara de la Sierra reservoir overlook, 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 white village on a steep hill in the Sierra de Grazalema, with a Moorish keep at the top and the Zahara-El Gastor reservoir laid out below. The houses are whitewashed each spring; the water below shifts from olive to deep green with the season. It is one of the pueblos blancos of Cádiz province, and one of the smallest, with about 1,400 people.
The place, in three passes.
Zahara de la Sierra is a hilltop village in northern Cádiz province, Andalusia, inside the Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park. It sits at about 511 metres above the Zahara-El Gastor reservoir, the embalse that fills the valley below. The population is around 1,400. The village is one of the Pueblos Blancos, the chain of whitewashed villages strung along the Sierra. Its hill was a Moorish stronghold until 1483, when Christian forces took it in one of the final campaigns of the Granada war; the keep at the summit dates from that earlier period.
The Embalse de Zahara-El Gastor was completed in 1991 on the Guadalete river, with a capacity of about 223 cubic hectometres. It supplies drinking water to the western Cádiz coast and irrigation to the valley farms. The colour shifts with the season — clearer green in the rains of late autumn, paler and more olive by August when the reservoir draws down. A swimming and picnic area called El Higuerón opens on the north shore in summer. Black storks and griffon vultures nest in the cliffs above.
Zahara is reached by the CA-9104 from Algodonales or by the Garganta Verde road from Grazalema. The Moorish castle keep is a short, steep walk above the village square, with the reservoir laid out in full view. The Sierra de Grazalema park office in El Bosque issues permits for restricted routes — the Garganta Verde and the Pinsapar fir forest both require booking in advance. Ronda is about half an hour east; Jerez and the coast are an hour and a half west. The village has a handful of small restaurants and guest-houses.
