Vejer de la Frontera, Cádiz

The urban centre of Vejer de la Frontera is located in Cádiz on a promontory overlooking the Atlantic coast and gazing toward the African continent on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar.

From the outset, this city had to adapt to being situated on a slope, with tight, irregular-shaped blocks with scant depth and main streets that hew to the sloping curves, trying to adapt themselves to the topography.

The ancient town centre is located on the northernmost hill, surrounded by a wall with a castle at its crest. This historic district and the neighbourhoods around it form the Vejer de la Frontera Historical Ensemble, which was listed in 1976.

The walled area forms an irregular polygon that adapts to the local topography, encapsulating an area of approximately 40,000 square meters. It is flanked by three towers and is punctured by three gates. The castle has a rectangular layout with three turrets; a courtyard of arms, a central patio for the residential building, and a single access gate dating back to the eleventh century.

The city currently has a population of 10,554, 4,603 of whom live outside the city limits, in surrounding rural areas. In addition to this, the city’s many attractions make it one of the region’s top tourist destinations. This has led the urban centre to continue to grow, progressively taking over new elevations.

Both the single-family homes and the multi-family buildings are organised around a central patio connected to the street by a passageway. In the case of multi-family homes, the patio itself provides access to the houses.

The buildings are mainly built with load-bearing walls that are generally built from masonry and which reach a maximum height of two stories at street level, although the height differences may vary greatly inside the buildings.

While there are some ceramic tile roofs, the roofs are mostly flat and, largely walkable, with subtle slopes made in light mud and finished with brick.

Most of the buildings have similar compositions on their façades, characterised by openings of a mainly vertical proportion, and the predominance of the solid mass over the openings in the walls.The walls are always whitewashed. Most of the carpentry is wood painted in red ochre color, and the metalwork and grillwork are in wrought iron and painted black. Andalusian bay windows covered with monteras appear on the ground floor of some houses, although it is more common to see balconies jutting out from the upper floors.