Cave de la Victoria

Google Maps:
36.71849, -4.30010

Type of site:
Cave

Place of location: Parque Arqueológico del Mediterráneo – Acantilados del Cantal.
Village/Town: Rincón de la Victoria
Municipality: Rincón de la Victoria (Málaga)
Region: Andalucia
State: España
Telephone: 952406162 - 643213427
Website: http://www.turismoenrincon.es/cueva-de-la-victoria/
E-mail: visitascuevavictoria@gmail.com

Natural Environment:

Sea cliff located at the eastern end of the Bay of Malaga, 11 km from the historic centre of the capital of the Costa del Sol. Historically known as El Cantal. It is a limestone mountain of marine sedimentary origin that preserves numerous cavities, some of which are very large (more than 1.5 km long). In 2003, the Rincón de la Victoria Town Hall protected more than seventy thousand square metres in the upper part of El Cantal, an area that conserves a Mediterranean forest (holm oaks, wild olive trees, carob trees, palmettos, rosemary trees, etc.) and in its interior the caves of La Victoria and the Higuerón gallery.

+info

Opening Times:

MONDAY: visits at 10.00 a.m., 12.30 p.m. and 4.00 p.m. (10 people each).

TUESDAY: Closed.

WEDNESDAY: Closed.

THURSDAY: visits at 10:00 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. (10 people each).

FRIDAY: visits at 10:00 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. (10 people each).

SATURDAYS: visits at 10:00 am, 12:30 pm and 4:00 pm (10 people each).

On 24, 25 and 31 December, 1 and 6 January, the Cueva de la Victoria will be closed.

SUNDAYS: visits at 10:00 am, 12:30 pm and 4:30 pm (10 people each).

Note: on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, public holidays, the Cueva de la Victoria can be visited in its three timetables.

Booking and access:

Tickets to the Cueva de la Victoria can be purchased through the sales platforms:

– https://www.turismoenrincon.es/cueva-de-la-victoria/

– www.giglon.com

The Cueva de la Victoria is a cave that can be visited speleologically (with helmets and headlamps provided by the guide). It is compulsory to wear field shoes or trekking shoes. It is an experience specially designed for families with teenagers.

– Access is limited to people over 8 years old and recommended for people under 75 years old.

– It is not an activity suitable for people with mobility problems, as it is not a tourist cave, nor is it electrically illuminated.

Nearby cultural destinations:

In the same municipality of Rincón de la Victoria:

– Cueva del Tesoro: A very unique geological formation due to the interaction of continental groundwater and the intrusion of the Mediterranean Sea which completely flooded it. A cave of great proportions (more than 1.5 km of rooms and galleries), it has historically been a cave visited since the 17th century. Its archaeology is widely represented in the National Archaeological Museum. It maintains a gallery off the tourist circuit with a large collection of Palaeolithic rock art studied by Breuil in 1918/1921.

– Villa Romana de Antiopa: An example of a “villa a mare” located a few metres from the beach, it is an extraordinary example of a Roman building linked to roads, trade and the exploitation of resources, mainly marine. Its luxury, reflected in its extraordinary mosaics, has turned it, after its magnificent excavation and musealisation, into a very powerful cultural resource.

– Bezmiliana Fortress and Almenara Towers: From the beginning of the Middle Ages, near the beaches of the current municipality of Rincón de la Victoria, several unique buildings have been documented which can be visited free of charge: The Bezmiliana Fortress, the Bezmiliana Fortress, the coastal Almenara Tower of Cantal and the coastal Almenara Tower of Benagalbon. Four buildings whose architecture describes the importance of the historical defence of this coast and its roads from the 9th century to the 19th century.

– Museum of Malaga/Palacio de la Aduana: 12 km from the Cueva de la Victoria the archaeological collections of the province of Malaga are exhibited. Considered the fifth museum in Spain, it is framed in a monumental building built in the time of Carlos III. Its extraordinary collection begins with the Neanderthal human remains and culminates with the pictorial avant-garde that was generated after the influences of Picasso.

– Museo Picasso Málaga: Considered the museum of Picasso’s family, since it exhibits the collection of his descendants and the paintings that the genius from Malaga treasured. The Picasso Museum exhibits works from throughout his life, including the artist’s pictorial influence from Spanish prehistoric archaeology. An essential museum because in its historic building (Palacio de Buenavista), you can visit the archaeological excavations of Phoenician and Roman Malaga. It is located 12.5 km from the Cueva de la Victoria.

Nearby natural destinations:

In the municipality of Rincón de la Victoria:

– Gran Senda Litoral: a path more than one hundred kilometres long that runs along the entire coast of Malaga from Manilva to Maro. The Rincón de la Victoria section, which is nine kilometres long and pedestrianised, runs along the Cantal cliffs, one of the most important natural spaces on the Costa del Sol, with endemic rock plants, underwater meadows of Mediterranean Posidonias and nesting areas for aquatic birds. It is also one of the most important karst landscapes in the province of Malaga, with more than thirty caves, eleven of which are prehistoric. It is 500 metres from the Cueva de la Victoria.

– Archaeological Park of the Mediterranean: Plot of more than seventy thousand square metres, with native Mediterranean forest vegetation and a network of paths that converge at the entrance wells to the Cueva de la Victoria. The original vegetation includes wild olive trees, carob trees, some holm oaks and shrubs such as hawthorn, palmetto, rosemary, thyme and asparagus. Among the most important animals, there is a wide variety of birds. The presence of the chameleon stands out. This Archaeological Park, duly delimited, opens every day at ten in the morning and closes at seven in the evening. The Cueva de la Victoria and the Galería del Higuerón, both with cave paintings, are located underground.

Accommodations (Tourism Website):
https://www.turismoenrincon.es/donde-dormir/
Restaurants (Tourism Website):
https://www.turismoenrincon.es/gastronomia/

Age of the artistic representations:

At present, the studies carried out on the artistic graphic manifestations documented in the Cueva de la Victoria fall into three main phases:

Upper Palaeolithic Archaic phase: Aurignacian/Gravetian (between 40,000 – 25,000 years old): where aniconic graphic expression (without naturalistic figures) was captured through red pigments applied directly with the fingers or blown. The “positive” and “negative” hands, punctuations, strokes, airbrushed surfaces and stains stand out. This is probably a mode of expression that preceded figurative Palaeolithic art, and is of great scientific importance due to its age and subject matter, which places it on the chronological border between the last Neanderthal human groups and the first sapiens that occupied southern Iberia.

Upper Palaeolithic figurative phase: Gravetian/Solutrian/Magdalenian (between 24,000 and 13,500 years old): with naturalistic representations of the fauna of the land/maritime environment of the Cantal. In the galleries that can now be visited, species that served as food for these hunters and fishermen settled in the Bay of Malaga were depicted, such as: an equine, two goats, a deer and a bovine; along with marine animals such as a cetacean and a fish figure (generic). The figure of a long-necked bird has also been documented, which could be a cormorant.

Neolithic Schematic phase (between 6,400 and 4,500 years old): with around a hundred human sketches, executed in white, which were painted on two facing walls of one of the rooms in the Victoria cave which contained, in its central space, a collective ossuary during the Neolithic period. In this case, the graphic/artistic display is totally linked to death. The funerary world in this type of natural cavities precedes the megalithic phenomenon and remains a practice parallel to the construction of large tombs for several millennia.

General description of the destination:

A natural cave with a 400-metre long gallery. It has two access shafts, located at the ends of its cavern, the first 3.5 metres deep and the second 8 metres deep (which is not used during visits). Two large spaces, separated by a series of galleries and small rooms, preserve Palaeolithic and Neolithic (schematic) cave art. The Cueva de la Victoria can be visited in its entirety, given that it has sufficient support measures for speleological progression to facilitate the visit for people from 10 years of age.

The visitor service office facilities are located in the same space that functions as the Interpretation Centre of the Cuevas del Cantal/Cueva del Tesoro.

History of the site:

The Cueva de la Victoria was discovered in 1918 by the prehistorian Henri Breuil on one of his trips to Malaga. In 1924 he published one of his white paintings and several red Palaeolithic naturalistic figures, discovered in the adjacent “Cueva del Higuerón”. From 1941 onwards, the archaeologist Simeón Giménez, responsible for the excavations in Malaga, excavated the Sala del Dosel and extracted various Neolithic archaeological pieces which he deposited in the Malaga Museum. In 1972, the archaeologist Francisco Javier Fortea carried out scientific archaeological excavations in the Sala de las Conchas, which revealed Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic occupations, the latter being attributable to a funerary use.

An update of the rock art preserved in the Cueva de la VIctoria was presented at the International Congress on the Strait of Gibraltar by María del Mar Espejo and Pedro Cantalejo in 1987. Subsequently, these same researchers have applied new technologies to the rock art, obtaining an inventory with more than 125 graphic motifs, published in 2007. At present, the Cave Art of the Cueva de la Victoria is being analysed by means of a series of analytical samplings that are making it possible to determine its chronology and pictorial composition (pigments). The new methodologies applied to the rock art represent a great advance for scientific knowledge and cultural dissemination of the site at the present time.

Museographic resources description:

The Cueva de la Victoria shares with the Cueva del Tesoro its museum and visitor reception resources:

– It has 7 car parks for vehicles, duly signposted.

– A large semi-circular porticoed atrium for the reception of visitors, with the two visitor offices of both caves (the atrium is shared with the Cueva del Tesoro), with staff available in Spanish and English.

– Exhibition area with panels and maps of the Cantal caves.

– Three areas of archaeological display cases with materials from the prehistoric caves.

– In the outdoor area and in the Mediterranean Archaeological Park, visitors to the Cueva de la Victoria will find various information panels on the prehistory of the Cantal, maps of the Bay of Malaga and a life-size reproduction of the main panel of the prehistoric paintings in the Cueva de la Victoria.