Alcazaba or Gibralfaro: Which Hill to Pick, and the Order for Doing Both

The Alcazaba is a building you walk through. From the gate on Calle Alcazabilla the route climbs a bent passage through the Puerta de la Bóveda, the Puerta de las Columnas with its two Roman shafts taken from the theatre below, and the Torre del Cristo into the lower enclosure, where the Plaza de Armas is now a Hispano-Arab garden. Then through the Puerta de los Cuartos de Granada into the upper enclosure, where the eleventh-century Taifa palace keeps a triple horseshoe arcade on marble columns and the Nasrid palace two courtyards with their original pools, and a permanent exhibition of ceramics from the site runs through the rooms. The Torre del Homenaje stands at the end as a ruin. It is, on the official history page's figures, 14,200 square metres of which 7,000 were built on.

Gibralfaro is a wall you walk round. The official visit page is candid: very few Arab remains survive inside, because the site was a working garrison from 1487 to 1925 and the mosque and its outbuildings were removed. What there is, is the circuit of the rampart walk along 733 metres of wall in thirty sections with eight towers, the Torre Blanca, the largest albarrana tower left in al-Andalus, the 40-metre Airón well, and the Interpretation Centre in the eighteenth-century powder magazine, whose subject is the garrison years: uniforms by century, a model of Muslim Málaga against the modern city and the 1791 map by the port watchman Joseph Carrión de Mula.

Verdict on what is inside

Alcazaba, and it is not close. If you care about Islamic architecture there is nothing at the castle to set beside the Taifa arcade. The Alcazaba page walks the gates one by one.

The Gibralfaro page explains what the walls are made of.

The Alcazaba starts on a pedestrian street beside the Roman Theatre and rises by a cobbled ramp with steps through its gates. The guided-walk operators list it as unsuitable for wheelchairs and reduced mobility. The official visit page names a lift from Calle Guillén Sotelo on the far side of the hill that delivers you into the upper enclosure, but publishes no hours for it, and a private guide site reports it out of service, so it is an option to confirm at the ticket office rather than to plan around.

Gibralfaro is 132 metres up, and the official page gives three ways: about 20 minutes on foot up the Paseo de Don Juan Temboury from the Alcazaba foot, the steeper Coracha path beside the walled corridor, or EMT bus 35 from the centre roughly every 30 minutes, at $1.63 (€1.40) on the Ayuntamiento's tariff. The bus goes to the gate, which makes the castle, oddly, the more reachable of the two for anyone who cannot climb: the rampart walk itself is stepped and unfenced in places, but the mirador and the Interpretation Centre are a few steps from where the bus stops.

Verdict on the climb

Gibralfaro by bus is the easier arrival. The Alcazaba on foot is the easier visit once you are inside, because its ramp is gradual and shaded in parts and the castle's walkway is neither. In July and August the Gibralfaro page argues for the bus up and the Coracha down. getting around Málaga has the fares.

Each monument is $8.16 (€7) general and $3.50 (€3) reduced. The combined ticket is $11.65 (€10) and $5.83 (€5). Groups of more than ten pay $5.83 (€5) and $9.32 (€8). Children under 6 are free. And every Sunday from 14:00 both are free for everyone, with no residency test. The combined ticket is sold at both gates and on the monument's own shop, with no time slot and no online surcharge. Two singles cost $16.32, so the moment the second hill enters the plan the combined ticket saves $4.66 (€4), and the official page does not print how long the second entry stays valid, which is the reason this guide says do both on one day.

The resellers change none of that. The cheapest resold Alcazaba entry on the site is $18.61 for the same gate, and the resold combined tickets with an audio track run $26.24 and $29.08. The only listings that add something the gate does not sell are the guided walks with Alcazaba entry from $13.96, and there is no guided walk of the castle with entry at all. The full ladder against every reseller is on Alcazaba tickets.

Verdict on price

A draw on the single fare, and a decision the combined ticket makes for you. If you are choosing one because of money, the mirador below the castle gate is free at any hour and gives Gibralfaro's view without the ticket, so pay the $8.16 for the Alcazaba and take the castle's panorama for nothing. What a whole day in the city costs is on Málaga costs.

Neither monument publishes a visit length, so these are our routings. The Alcazaba runs about an hour for the gates and palaces and an hour and a half with the gardens and the walls. The four guided walks all last 90 minutes and one leaves you inside afterwards.

Gibralfaro is about an hour inside the walls for the full rampart circuit and the Interpretation Centre, plus 20 minutes up on foot or a bus wait each way. Doing both with the walk between them is about three and a half hours door to door from the Alcazaba gate, which is a morning with lunch at the end of it, or an afternoon that ends at the castle for sunset in summer, when last admission is 19:00.

Verdict on time

With one hour, the Alcazaba, because it starts where you are standing. With two, still the Alcazaba, done properly. With three and a half, both, in the order set out below.

The one-day plan that uses this arithmetic is Málaga in one day.

Gibralfaro wins the view and the official page says so in its first sentence: the fortress dominates the whole city, from a crest 132 metres above the sea. From the rampart walk you get the port and the bullring, the city centre with the Cathedral's single tower, the Coracha dropping to the Alcazaba, and the Montes behind, in one continuous circuit. The Alcazaba's view is a good one, the port and the Cathedral from part way up the hill, but it is a view from a terrace, not a panorama, and the palaces are the reason you are there.

The qualification that matters: the castle's panorama is available free. The municipal Mirador de Gibralfaro sits just below the ticket gate, outside the walls, on the road bus 35 uses, and it looks over the port, La Malagueta and the bullring at any hour with no ticket. The ticket buys the walkway and the museum, and a slightly higher and wider version of the same view.

Verdict on the view

Gibralfaro, but from the mirador if the view is all you want. Pay the castle's $8.16 for the circuit of the walls, not for the panorama. The best light is the last hour before the summer 19:00 last admission.

The seasons are on best time to visit Málaga.

The two monuments keep one timetable: 09:00 to 20:00 from 1 April to 31 October and 09:00 to 18:00 from 1 November to 31 March, every day, last admission one hour before closing, and the official page prints no closed dates at all, not even 25 December. The trap is the third site on the hill. The Roman Theatre at the Alcazaba gate belongs to the Junta de Andalucía, is free, and runs Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 to 18:00 and Sundays 10:00 to 16:00, closed Mondays.

So the theatre goes first on any day it is open, and on a Sunday the free-entry plan is theatre at 14:00 and the Alcazaba gate at 15:30. The other trap is the free Sunday itself: it is the busiest three hours of the week on both hills, and in winter it leaves only until 17:00. The whole city's Sunday and Monday picture is on Sunday and Monday openings, and the theatre has its own page, the Roman Theatre.

Buy the combined ticket at the Alcazaba gate on Calle Alcazabilla at 09:00, having walked the free Roman Theatre next door first if it is not a Monday. Climb through the five gates to the palaces while the guided groups are still assembling at the glass pyramid, give the gardens and the walls the second half of the hour, and leave by the same gate. From the foot of the hill the official castle page times the Paseo de Don Juan Temboury at about 20 minutes up through the gardens and the pines.

In summer take bus 35 from the Paseo del Parque instead. At the top, circle the walls anticlockwise from the Interpretation Centre so the port comes first and the Coracha last, spend half an hour in the museum, and come down by bus to the Paseo del Parque for lunch by the port, or by the Coracha path back to Calle Alcazabilla and its cafés. Three and a half hours, door to door, on one ticket, and the only thing the official page leaves unanswered, how long the combined ticket stays valid, never arises.

And the third site most people forget

The Roman Theatre at the Alcazaba's gate is free, Junta-run and shut on Mondays and by 18:00 on other days, which is why it opens the morning rather than closing it. Its columns are in the Alcazaba's second gate, so the three sites are one story told in the right order. The Roman Theatre page has its hours, things to do in Málaga sets the hill beside the rest of the city, and the trip as a whole starts on the Málaga guide homepage.