Houses on the Wall

The most ‘typical’ image of La Vila Joiosa is this canvas of stone and colour that can be seen from the road bridge or from the south bank of the river Amadorio in its final stretch. The stones of the Renaissance walls and the characteristic colours of the Historic Centre of La Vila Joiosa, one of the best preserved and an example of polychromy in the western Mediterranean, show us the adaptation of the spaces to the different historical moments.

After the Berbers destroyed the city walls and the church in 1543, a Royal Order favoured the reconstruction of these buildings, as La Vila Joiosa, capital of one of the 10 districts of the kingdom for anti-corsair defence, could not afford not to be one of the best-armed fortresses in the kingdom.

With the silk taxes, the ‘Generalitat’ of the time financed the wall between the city and the river Amadorio. In the War of the Spanish Succession La Vila Joiosa, together with Alicante, was the last town to surrender and the Bourbon troops destroyed the city gates. Although during the 18th century La Vila Joiosa continued to suffer corsair attacks, at the end of the century the Algerian danger disappeared and the wall was no longer useful. At this point the locals began to build on it, unknowingly creating what would become the most photographed image of La Vila Joiosa.