Gibraltar Day Trip from Málaga, with Colomares Castle

Castillo Monumento Colomares: Hours, Tickets & Best Time to Visit (2026)

Not a castle, and not old. Castillo Monumento Colomares was built between 1987 and 1994 by a Benalmádena doctor, Esteban Martín Martín, with two bricklayers and no architect, as a private monument to Christopher Columbus and the voyage of 1492. He deliberately mixed Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Mudéjar and Renaissance styles in a single structure to represent the Spain of that moment — so you walk from a horseshoe arch through a Gothic vault into something that looks like a Byzantine chapel, in the space of thirty seconds.

It should be terrible. It isn't. It's dense with detail, deliberately unplaceable in time, and the whole thing sits on a hillside looking east over the Mediterranean. Somewhere inside is a chapel of 1.96 square metres, registered by Guinness as the smallest church in the world — small enough that with your arms out you touch both walls.

Gibraltar & the Upper Rock: Tickets, Access & the Cable Car Closure (2026)

A 426-metre limestone monolith at the mouth of the Mediterranean, British since 1713, with its own currency, its own border, and about 34,000 people living on 6.7 square kilometres of it. From the top you can see Africa on a clear day — the Rif mountains of Morocco, 25 km across the strait. That's the reason to come.

Most of the top of the Rock is the Upper Rock Nature Reserve, a single ticket covering St Michael's Cave, the Great Siege Tunnels, the Moorish Castle, the Skywalk, the Windsor Suspension Bridge, O'Hara's Battery and the Apes' Den.

Add what the minibus tour actually cost you per person, and whether the driver's commentary was worth it. A real figure here is worth more than the range I've estimated below.

Private cars are not allowed inside the Nature Reserve at all, so the only alternative to the minibus is walking up — a steep climb of well over an hour that eats the best part of your afternoon.

St Michael's Cave: Hours, What's Inside & Whether It's Worth It

A limestone cavern inside the Rock, known since Roman times and once believed to be bottomless — the local legend had it running under the strait to Africa, which is supposedly how the monkeys got here. In the Second World War it was prepared as an emergency military hospital. Since 2014 it has housed The Cathedral Cave, an auditorium with a permanent light-and-sound installation that washes the stalactites in shifting colour.

Opinions divide on the lighting. It is unquestionably artificial and it is not what the cave looks like. It's also genuinely beautiful, and the scale of the main chamber — large enough to seat several hundred people — reads much better lit than it would under floodlights. Included in the reserve ticket, so there's no decision to make.

The Barbary Macaques: Where to See Them and the Rules

Around 200 Barbary macaques live wild on the Rock in six troops — the only wild monkey population in Europe. They are habituated to people, entirely unafraid, and concentrated around the Apes' Den, the old cable car top station and the Great Siege Tunnels, which is to say exactly where all the visitors are.

They are also wild animals with fast hands. The rules are short and they matter:

• Don't feed them. It's illegal in Gibraltar and carries a fine. It also makes them aggressive toward the next person.
• Don't touch them, and don't put your face near one for a photo. They bite when provoked, and a bite means a trip to St Bernard's Hospital.
• Close your bag and hold it. They will open a rucksack and take food out of it in seconds, and they know what a plastic bag means.
• Don't show teeth. A human smile reads as a threat display.

Handled sensibly they're the highlight of the Rock, and they will sit a metre away from you on a wall being completely indifferent.