Antequera

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  Dolmen De Viera

Admission to all the dolmens is free and there is a new information centre and car park at the main site. This is the first dolmen you come to from the visitor centre. All around the area are sites of Neolithic settlements and many cave dwellings. The nearest settlement to the dolmens is a late copper age village on a hilltop 200 metres east of Viera dating back to around 2600 BC.

 This is a chambered tomb made up of a long corridor that is divided in two sections and opens into a rectangular chamber through a square hole carved into a large slab. The length of the inner space is 21 metres and most of the internal uprights remain. It is covered by a large mound and faces east which is common for most Spanish dolmen.

 

 
  Dolmen De Menga

This tomb consists of a forecourt, a corridor and a large chamber. It is about 27 metres long and the height of the roof reaches 3.5 metres at the back. The widest point of the chamber is about 6 metres wide. Five large slabs, some almost 1 metre thick, form the roof and there are also three substantial pillars inside the chamber helping to hold up the huge slabs. 

At the back of the chamber is a deep shaft going down about 20 metres with water in the bottom which seems unusual in a tomb. This monument faces northeast towards a mountain that might have been significant as this direction is unusual.

 

 
 

El Romeral

This site is a few miles from the others and if you follow the map on the back of the ticket you are given you will have no problem finding it. Turn left out of the car park and follow the Malaga signs, cross over three roundabouts and at the 4th take the left exit (signed to the tomb) and follow the rest of the signs. When you reach the tomb it is in a pleasant site with trees around and on the mound.

It has a corridor of dry stone walling tapering in to form the chamber with large capstones. It is over 26 metres long and about 1.5 metres wide. The corridor has eleven roofing slabs and the inner chamber is circular at around 5.2 metres diameter. The inner chamber has vaulted masonry walls capped with a large slab with the height around 3.75 metres. At the end is a second smaller passage leading to another small chamber. The overall length of the monument is 34 metres. This tomb is one of the only ones to face SSW on the Iberian Peninsula.

 

 
 

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