Looking in a sorry state......





Working on the restoration earlier this year......Sand blasting the stone work.



Now you can see that they have put glass in the upper floor to stop the birds getting inside.



And now it looks fabulous... In the picture I included the security cameras now pointed at the building on the post on the right.



Sanji x

Lovely building Sanji imagine hoofing up all those stairs with your shopping

Lovely building, a push chair would be fun

I think there is also going to be an entrance at the back of the building from Calle de las Mercedes.
They've erected another sign on the street pointing towards some big iron gates (locked up) and it looks more accessible as a slope rather than steps.
When we walked down Calle Mercedes last week, the workmen were still busy working on the land at the back of the building.



Sanji x

Is that lady wearing a child's car seat on her head?

Glynis HT Admin wrote:

Is that lady wearing a child's car seat on her head? :rofl

I've just had to zoom in on that
I think she has black hair and is humping a black rucksack high on her back

Sanji x

Sanji wrote:

Glynis HT Admin wrote:

Is that lady wearing a child's car seat on her head? :rofl

I've just had to zoom in on that
I think she has black hair and is humping a black rucksack high on her back

Sanji x

Ahhh yes.... Problem solved

I had an unplanned week in Torremolinos last month by booking a late deal at a price too good to miss, and after many years of wondering what it would be like inside Villa Pepa (the orginal name of the residence). I managed to get a look inside.

The first thing that struck me, is that you don't realise just how high up you are, until you get inside, and I can image the fantastic views that would have been seen from this building in the 1920's/1930's of the Malaga coastline, before all the construction took place along the Costa del Sol.

Whilst it has been beautifully restored, the mosaic tiles on the walls in the entrance hall seem to be the only interior original remnants of this building.
It has been furnished with minimal furniture to enable people to walk around, and there are some beautiful mosaic and wood inlay pieces of furniture on display....with everything being new, the aroma of wood was very strong.

However, I was disappointed that they have knocked several rooms together, which would have been the kitchen and possibly the dining room, to create a huge room full of chairs for ceremonies to take place.
As I have a few of the 'Tiffany styled' lights in my own home, I was pleased to see these in each of the rooms, but I was very disappointed that they couldn't save any of the original flooring, which probably consisted of some gorgeous tiles, and now they've laid modern grey tiles throughout, which don't do the inside any favours, but no doubt will be more serviceable for the traffic ......inside they have created toilets for the public.

Outside - the mosaic tiles are lovely and only a close inspection reveals their beauty and the skill of the craftsmen. You could walk around it in less than 10 minutes and think to yourself that it wasn't worth the hike up all the steps, but if you stop to look in all the nooks and crannies, you see some fine work of the craftsmen around the windows, arches and the two end Zacalos, etc....all depicting the neo-Mudejar or neo-Arabic Andalusian style.

Slightly off topic, I was probably disappointed because I was hoping for something like the Orduña house in Guadalest (Costa Blanca), which has been made into a museum with furnishings donated by Joaquín María de Orduña, and replicating the period when the house was occupied by the Orduña familia.
http://www.guadalest.es/patrimonio.php

I appreciate that 'Villa Pepa' is smaller and they wouldn't be able to place a lot of furniture in each room, otherwise there wouldn't be any room to walk around.... (in my opinion) it's now all too sterile inside and once you've seen it, I can't think why you'd want to visit again, unless for a ceremony.

Having said all that, Casa de los Navajas is a beautiful building that has survived the onslaught of the property developers and the concrete blocks that were catering for mass tourism .......it's open to the public a few hours a day, 12 - 2pm and 6pm - 8pm...there is a small charge of a couple of euros, unless you're a pensioner, student or a child under 12 years of age, in which case it is free....and children under 16 years old must be accompanied by an adult.

Here's a video I've knocked together from some of the photos that I took.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15fUC6d3-y8

Sanji x

Many thanks for your update Sanji

Also for the photo's. I see what you mean, I love the pieces of furniture and the windows, but the smooth walls and tiled floors make it look more modern and 'clinical'

Sanji, I enjoyed reading and looking at the photos of Casa de los Navajas , I take it you went in November. how did you enjoy the holiday experience at that time of year? We generally go around the Med in October and wondered if you would recommend a very late holiday there

Lovely video of a lovely building, Sanji. I really love that style of architecture.

There are so many difficult decisions to be made when restoring/renovating an older building and it's a fine line to tread. I'm currently involved in a project to bring back into community use a medieval building, parts of which date back to the 13th century and we are finding it hard to make a decision about which things should be just repaired and restored with a light touch and which parts will need a much bigger renovation job done on them so that it can be be brought back into use as opposed to just being a museum piece. I'm sure that we will get it wrong in the sense that whatever we do we won't be able to please everybody. But one thing the heritage architect keeps re-assuring us about is that things which look a bit too new and over-restored when first done soon start to acquire a patina of age and no longer look out of place. Can't see that applying to the difficult decision of how to install a lift in a medieval stone building but we shall wait and see! Hopefully though the same will apply to this lovely building as it gets used and the newness rubs off a bit?

SM

shrimper wrote:

Sanji, I enjoyed reading and looking at the photos of Casa de los Navajas , I take it you went in November. how did you enjoy the holiday experience at that time of year? We generally go around the Med in October and wondered if you would recommend a very late holiday there

Yes, we went 18th -25th November. I always enjoy the Costa del Sol, chose whatever time of year I go, but when it gets into late November (depending where you stay) there are some places closed....some take their holidays and reopen for Xmas....Places like Torremolinos town centre and Fuengirola are 12 months working towns and of course there's always Malaga City..... it's muy tranquilo in the villages.

It's impossible to state any facts or figures about the weather.....After booking the holiday, I looked at several weather sites for the forecast and it didn't look good.
There was a deep trough sweeping across the Canary Islands and heading up the coast of Morocco towards Southern Spain, and it looked like we were going to have a horrid week with thunderstorms/ rain every day.

We had a dozen spots of rain one evening, we had one day where the sky was just a blanket of low clouds and the sea was very angry ( probably the back end of the weather trough that either changed direction or fizzled out) but it was still warm, and the rest of the time we had sunshine.
Dave reckons it was between 20° and 24° C.....and it felt like it too, I had to get out of the sun whilst having a spot of lunch in Malaga Port, it was burning my head.

We dropped on a good week, because it wasn't cold at night ( about 16° / 17 °) and a few days after returning home there was a tornado that wrecked a chiringuito in Playamar (Torremolinos).

It's just a chance you take with the weather at that time of the year.....I've been to Benalmadena in November and I got a flight home because it was days & days of continuous monsoon rain....I've been to La Carihuela (Torremolinos) in April for Dave's birthday and it's been cold, windy and raining..... I've been to Benidorm and I've been sunbathing on the beach on Xmas day, but it's been very cold when the sun goes down.

Sanji x

Thanks Sanji, I would have enjoyed your weather in November. We have been so lucky with our late holidays that one day we are going to drop a clanger, the last three October holidays I would have loved to turn the heat down a few degrees