On location
A Fistful of Dollars starring
the young Clint Eastwood as The Stranger was just one of
hundreds of films made in the desert around Tabernas,
northwest of the villa, in the 1960s. Sergio Leone and
other Italian directors used these badlands as the backdrop
for many classic spaghetti westerns, David Lean shot parts
of
Lawrence of Arabia here and Harrison Ford did
his thing as
Indiana Jones. The original film sets
survived, have been revamped, and a visit to one for a
cowboy show (or two…) is a must – leaflets
at the house give details of times and prices. Ennio
Morricone's music plays from hidden speakers and there are
jail breaks, saloon-bar fights and other stunts.
Mini Hollywood, where
The Magnificent
Seven was made, is the most commercialised of the sets
open to the public and has a pool and zoo.
Texas
Hollywood/Fort Bravo is where
The Good, The
Bad and The Ugly and more recently David Beckham's
Pepsi ad was filmed.
Western
Leone is the third, off the A92, and is the
location of Sweetwater Ranch in Leone's
Once Upon a
Time in the West, where Charles Bronson had a shootout
with Henry Fonda.
The desert around Tabernas
With only 20mm rainfall
each year, this is the only real desert in Europe, around a
40-minute drive from the house. You can travel into the
heart of the desert on horseback or in a 4X4. The only
plants that can survive are cacti, except in the dried-up
river beds where you'll sometimes see salt cedar and
oleander. There's a
solar power research centre up
here that you can visit. Because the air is so dry and
clear, with little light pollution, this is a prime
location for star-gazing.
Almería
Visit the old town and the sprawling
citadel, the Alcazaba, and maybe sample a few places on the
tapas trail and do some shopping. In the eleventh century,
when Almería was an independent kingdom and the wealthiest
city of Spain, the citadel contained gardens and palaces
and was a haven for 20,000 people. It was reputed to rival
the court of Granada, but you have to use your imagination
to picture this since little beyond the walls and towers
remains. Even so, it's still one of the best surviving
examples of Moorish military architecture. Modern Almería
clusters beneath the Alcazaba, and steep lanes lead down to
the cathedral. More like a castle than a church, its six
gothic towers once held canons but weren't enough to
protect it from raids by Turkish and Berber pirates and an
earthquake in the 16th century, after which the whole thing
had to be rebuilt.
