5 Amazing Towns on Perilous Cliff Sides
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Spot Cool Stuff loves a good cliff-side town. There’s something about them that’s romantic, daring and a little impossible. Here are five of our favorites places where no one with vertigo would want to live:
Manarola, Italy
The uber-colorful Italian village of Manarola is not the most precariously placed cliff-side settlement of the five in this review. This is fortunate considering the amount of wine produced—and consumed—here. The local specialty is Sciacchetrà, a sweet dessert wine that tastes of honey and apricots. Manarola is one of five villages in the Cinque Terre area of the Italian Riviera. The other four villages, not incidentally, have rather cool cliff-side locations as well.
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Al Hajjarah, Yemen
Yemen is one of Spot Cool Stuff’s favorite travel countries (though, sadly, these days the security situation there for travelers is spotty). In the western part of the country lie the Haraz mountains and the village of Al Hajjarah. The fortified clifftop center of the village was originally built by the Ottomans in the 11th century, partly for military purposes and partly to serve as a Muslim enclave for what was then a mostly Jewish village. Today, Al Hajjarah makes for a striking trekking destination. Or you can travel here from San’a in about 3 hours by shared taxi via Manakhan.
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Bonifacio, France
Many of the planet’s cliff-side towns were originally built in their location for some military reason. Such is the case with Bonifacio, which sits at the southern tip of the French island of Corsica. The town’s position, strung out along white limestone cliffs, not only overlooks one of the island’s best harbors but also the strategically significant straight that separates Corsica from rival island Sardinia. More recently tourism has been the force driving Bonifaciens to built holiday homes and B&Bs on the cliff’s edge where the view out across the Mediterranean Sea rather spectacular.
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Castellfollit de la Roca, Spain
Castellfollit de la Roca, in the Catalonia region in the middle of Spain, has a doubly impressive location—this 1,000 person village is perched on a spit of land with cliffs on both sides. The village gets a steady flow of tourists during the day, which is exactly why you should spend the night here. On warm evenings it is blissful sitting out with a nice drink on a cliff-side terrace in Castellfollit de la Roca looking out over the Catalonian countryside. For overnights there’s one only choice of hotel: the Pensión Ca la Paula (#3 Plaça de Sant Roc, tel. 972 29 40 32, no website at the time of writing).
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Ronda, Spain
Ronda does not sit upon one strategically significant hilltop in the Andalusia region of Spain. It sits upon two hilltops, only 68 meters (223 feet) apart but separated by the 120 meter (400 feet) deep El Tajo Gorge. Ever since the Celts first built Ronda it has been an issue how to bridge the two sections of town. The current bridge, called the Puente Nuevo (“new bridge”), took 42 years to build and was finally completed in 1793. (For North American travelers one of Spain’s endearing qualities is that a structure over 200 years old can be called “new”). The bridge is almost as amazing as Ronda’s cliff-side setting; the interior of the structure was used as a prison and torture chamber during the Spanish Civil War and is today a museum. As for the town of Ronda, it is the birthplace of modern bullfighting and claims both Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway among its former residents. But you won’t care about that when you are standing at the town’s edge gazing out over the long drop down.
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November 11th, 2011at 10:31 pm(#)
Beautiful!
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June 30th, 2011at 2:44 am(#)
wow, these are some exceptionally breathtaking photos
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June 9th, 2010at 12:45 pm(#)
I lived in Madrid Spain and visited Ronda. Its a wonderful town with beautiful views of the surrounding countryside. We stayed in a hotel that was incredible cheap but still very nice. I consider Ronda to be in my top 5 towns in Europe.
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June 2nd, 2010at 6:55 am(#)
I was in Ronda yesterday!! Words cannot describe the beauty… Andalucia is spectacular.
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March 30th, 2010at 10:48 am(#)
This is amazing. Now I have added 5 more places to see before I die. I better get crackin because spotcoolstuff just keeps showing me better and better destinations!
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November 30th, 2009at 12:14 pm(#)
Twitter: WGTravelTips
Love these pictures! Thanks for putting together the list. I’m happy to say I’ve even visited several on the list – will have to put some others on the ‘someday’ tally.
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November 23rd, 2009at 9:36 pm(#)
Tremendous photos, especially the first one of Ronda – that really shows how massive the cliffs are.
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November 6th, 2009at 8:34 am(#)
Twitter: travelcwb
Well – I had a great time! Here’s the write-up, as promised:
http://www.cheap-weekend-breaks.com/a-cheap-weekend-break-in-ronda
Don’t be frightened by the words cheap – it’s a normal blog
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October 27th, 2009at 2:20 pm(#)
Twitter: travelcwb
I first saw this post a while ago – but I’ve now made plans to go and see number five on your list this weekend. Let’s hope that bridge’s still sturdy…
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Spot Cool Travel Stuff Reply:
October 27th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Hey Abi. That’s great. Let us know how your visit went.
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October 22nd, 2009at 2:50 pm(#)
Twitter: newadventuresin
Wonderful pics. Thanks for sharing.
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October 2nd, 2009at 4:18 pm(#)
Twitter: brooke_allen
Such interesting places and awesome photos. I’ve never seen that village in Yemen before. Amazing.
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October 2nd, 2009at 4:07 pm(#)
Twitter: eugenephotoblog
Very cool!
I’ve been to Ronda, Spain! I highly recommend going there! Looking at the steep drop can make one dizzy. Here’s a postcard I captured while in Ronda: http://elbelbelb2000.blogtog.com/archives/6297_1579073640/300680
Thanks,
~Eugene
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June 10th, 2009at 9:49 am(#)
Twitter: velvetescape
That’s a fantastic post with some stunning pics. Well done! I’ve been to three of them: Manarola, Castellfollit & Bonifacio. Loved them all. I thought the vineyards planted along the cliffsides in Manarola were fascinating. Because of the steep cliffsides, they’d invented a whole system of vertical rails and trolleys to care for the vines and pluck the grapes. Very cool!
Cheers,
Keith
Keith Jenkins’s last blog post..Sundays in San Telmo
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Spot Cool Travel Stuff Reply:
June 10th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Hi Keith,
From your blog seem like the sort of guy who would have been to some of these. Thanks for sharing your account.
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April 28th, 2009at 9:49 am(#)
I’ve been to Ronda, Spain several times and it is a neat place. The town is on the top of the cliff. The view from the edges of the cliff are spectacular. Some spots look down into a ravine and other spots offers views of the countryside.
More pictures of Ronda, Spain are here:
http://www.aboutspaintravel.com/gallery2/v/ronda-spain/
DH Wall’s last blog post..11 Neat Rooftop Views in Spain
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April 19th, 2009at 5:54 am(#)
Twitter: catekiwi
Wonderful shots. I love these places, they are so dramatic and I think life there is just that extra special.
Cate’s last blog post..Water is life in Brunei’s Kampong Ayer
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April 16th, 2009at 9:15 am(#)
Twitter: WanderingEds
INCREDIBLE! i think i would be too freaked out to live there, though. heights do me in.
what GREAT photos – thanks for sharing! love the colors.
Jessie Voigts’s last blog post..Book Review: Rough Guide to Central America on a Budget
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April 15th, 2009at 11:47 pm(#)
You really do find cool places! I think Castellfollit is my fav.
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April 15th, 2009at 9:23 pm(#)
Loved reading this. There are so many others, but this little selection was just right.
L
Laura’s last blog post..The Ancients
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