What To See And Do In Guardamar Del Segura

Guardamar del Segura, in the south of the province of Alicante, is one of those places on the Levantine coast that offers a bit of everything. A place where you can not only enjoy some of the most emblematic beaches of the Costa Blanca, but also offers the opportunity to learn about the history of a place that was already inhabited by the Phoenicians. And as if that were not enough, nature lovers will also find the most suggestive landscapes.

The beaches of Guardamar del Segura

Throughout the municipal area there are more than 6 kilometers of beach  which, as usual on the Costa Blanca, are long beaches with fine sand and calm waves.

In this case we have to highlight Playa Centro, La Roqueta and Playa del Moncayo, the largest of all and also possessing the blue flag. But there are also others, and above all we must name the Tossals beach, separated from the rest by the mouth of the Segura river and which is a common place to do nudism.

The mouth of the Segura

Popularly, the town is known as Guardamar, although its official name adds “del Segura”, given the presence of the mouth of this river in the municipality. The river reaches this point after passing through four provinces in southeastern Spain: Jaén, Albacete, Murcia and Alicante.

In this way it reaches the so-called Gola del Segura, its mouth in the Mediterranean, where it generates a closed area and lagoons, in addition to reaching a great width, greater than 200 meters, due to an artificial channel. In short, if you visit Guardamar del Segura, you have to take a walk to the mouth of the river that gives it its name.

The pine forest of Guardamar de Segura

The Guardamar pine forest is another place to take a walk during a vacation in this town. It is an artificial forest extension based on pine, cypress, eucalyptus or palm trees. All of them planted at the end of the 19th century on an area of ​​sand dunes that threatened the cultivated fields around Guardamar del Segura.

This place is today a must-see space, and it is mainly due to the engineer Francisco Mira, who created a method to be able to plant on the sand dunes. The city is so grateful to him that one of the most beautiful parks in Guardamar del Segura bears his name, and the house where he lived has also been transformed into an interesting museum where he can meet this character and his work.

More about the sand dunes

However, there are still dunes in Guardamar del Segura that retain their most natural appearance. In fact, the dunes of Guardamar are one of its great treasures, and for this reason they are protected and are a very suggestive and photogenic walk of a couple of hours between the town itself and the marina.

In addition, in the highest part of the dune area, you can also visit another treasure, in this case of an archaeological nature: the Rábida Califal de las Dunas. A site that takes us to Muslim Spain in the 10th century. A kind of monastery from the days of Abderramán III that is an exceptional case for its good conservation within all the Spanish heritage.

And more about the history of Guardamar del Segura

However, during your stay in Guardamar you can take advantage of it to discover other sites. And there are even older ones like La Fonteta, which plunges us into the time of the Phoenicians, when navigators came here from the other end of the Mediterranean to establish their colonies.

From that time and later, the great finds that have emerged can be seen today in the Archaeological Museum of the city (MAG). There, the beautiful Lady of Guardamar will draw attention , an Iberian treasure that appeared in the Cabezo Lucero site, and that inevitably must be related to the most famous Lady of Elche , which was found north of Guardamar.

And to end the historical visit, we have to tell you about Guardamar Castle,  which, how could it be otherwise, rises above the town center. At present it is a perfectly consolidated ruin, which tells us about the past of the population, through which several civilizations have passed.

A population that has also suffered serious catastrophes, such as the great earthquake that occurred in 1829, which destroyed the fortress and much of the town. However, it resurfaced from horror and today Guardamar del Segura is a very attractive tourist destination in the province of Alicante.

Cover photo: Jorge Sanz