Castillo Monumento Colomares

Castillo Monumento Colomares is not an ancient fortress but a monument in the form of a castle, raised at Benalmádena in honour of the life and voyages of Christopher Columbus. Its builder was a doctor, Esteban Martín y Martín, who began the work in 1987 in an improvised way and finished it in 1994, helped by two masons from the nearby town of Mijas. The three men worked for seven years in brick, stone and cement, using techniques of the Middle Ages and no machinery: the castle was raised by hand.

Drawing on his knowledge of art, history and architecture, Martín moulded the work at his whim into what has been called a "unicum" — the Discovery of America narrated in stone. The building mixes neo-Byzantine, neo-Romanesque, neo-Gothic and neo-Mudéjar influences, holds stained glass within, and carries the symbols of the Catholic Monarchs and of the three cultures of medieval Spain: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Each element of the monument tells part of the story of 1492. All three of Columbus's ships are represented: the Niña at the top of the building beneath an arch recalling La Rábida, the monastery that sheltered Columbus when he arrived from Portugal; the Pinta on the main façade — the ship of the Pinzón brothers — borne up by a bronze horse's head in the manner of a Pegasus, a tribute to Martín Alonso Pinzón, the Huelva sailor who persuaded the crews of Palos de la Frontera to sail with the Admiral; and the Santa María standing apart from the other two, because she sank on Christmas Day at Santo Domingo. A small oratory holds an image of the Lord Salvador with a sailor's bell beside it, remembering the island Columbus reached on 12 October 1492 and baptised San Salvador, and bronze shields record gratitude to Queen Isabel and the crown of Castile, who backed the voyage after other states had turned it away.

A Chinese pagoda marks Columbus's original ambition of reaching the coasts of Asia, and the monument honours Diego Arana, Vicente Yáñez and many others who accompanied Columbus on the first voyage. It also argues a case of its own, championing the possible Mallorcan origin of Columbus, whose birthplace has never been established for certain. An empty mausoleum with a Gothic rose window stands for a fifth voyage — to Eternity — for the explorer died after his fourth crossing and no one knows for sure where his remains lie.

With a floor plan of 1,500 square metres, Colomares is the largest monument dedicated to Christopher Columbus. It also contains one of the smallest sacred spaces anywhere: a chapel of just 1.96 square metres, dedicated to St Elizabeth of Hungary, which entered the Guinness Book of Records in the early 1990s as the smallest church in the world.