Marbella’s Golden Mile is a small stretch of the Costa del Sol, located between Marbella and Puerto Banus . 6.5 km of luxury and exclusivity, expensive luxury real estate and luxury hotels, prestigious nightclubs and restaurants – here is the best that Marbella’s residential and tourism sector has to offer .
Where is the Golden Mile in Marbella?
The Golden Mile is a strip of coastline between the western edge of Marbella and Puerto Banus. The most expensive part is located between Ricardo Soriano Avenue, which smoothly turns into the N-340 highway, and the sea; all objects here are located on the first, second, maximum, third line. Many villas and residential residences on the first line have direct access to the beach. The most famous and expensive urbanizations are Casablanca, Santa Petronila, Santa Margarita, Las Torres del Marbella Club, Puente Romano, Los Verdiales, Playa Esmeralda, Alhambra del Mar and Oasis Club. Here, on the first and second lines, there are famous restaurants, designer boutiques, hotels and sports clubs.
Above this avenue there are multi-level residential complexes, in which the apartments are located on terraces one above the other. Each of these terraces offers panoramic views of the coast and the Mediterranean Sea. The pearls of such complexes are penthouses with spacious individual solariums. The most prestigious complexes include Altos de Puente Romano, Altos de Salamanca, La Trinidad, Las Lomas de Marbella Club, La Carolina, El Vicario, Monte Paraíso, El Capricho and Lomas del Rei.
The Golden Mile is not an administrative unit, so it is difficult to define its clear boundaries. Rather, it is an elite development zone. Recently, more and more often, more remote urbanizations have begun to be included in the Golden Mile of Marbella (for example, Sierra Blanca, Nagüeles, Cascada de Camojan and others).
Marbella Golden Mile: transport links
From the Golden Mile area there are convenient exits to the N-340 highway, as well as the A-7 and AP-7 highways. The center of Marbella or Puerto Banus can be reached in just minutes.
Distance to international airports and nearest resorts:
- Malaga Airport – 55 km;
- Gibraltar Airport – 69 km;
- Malaga – 63 km;
- Benalmadena – 47 km;
- Fuengirola – 35 km;
- Marbella – 4 km;
- Puerto Banus – 3 km;
- Estepona – 25 km;
- Manilva – 38 km;
- Sotogrande – 52 km;
- Gibraltar – 73 km.
A promenade stretches along the sea along the entire Golden Mile – a great place for walking or cycling.
History of Marbella’s Golden Mile
The history of the Golden Mile began back in 1854 with the opening of the most famous hotel on the coast, the Marbella Club Hotel. The location for the hotel was the Santa Margherita estate, purchased a little earlier by Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Next, in 1979, another fashionable hotel was opened – Puente Romano Resort Hotel. Both hotels are successfully operating to this day and serve as a symbol of the most prestigious area of the Costa del Sol. The name “Golden Mile” was not taken out of thin air: in the first decades, the fashionable coastal area actually occupied one mile – between the Marbella Club and Puente Romano.
The top five hotels in the Golden Mile are completed by Gran Meliá Hotel Don Pepe, Hotel Iberostar Marbella Coral Beach and Alanda Hotel Marbella.
The Golden Mile in Marbella was designed and implemented as a huge park complex, uniting individual villas, mansions and modern residential residences into a single natural and architectural ensemble. Exclusive, safe, comfortable – these are the words to describe life on the Golden Mile.
Popularity came to the Golden Mile immediately and forever. Over the course of several decades, all the cream of society – Spanish, European, world – have flocked here. Real estate on the Golden Mile was purchased by representatives of various royal houses and aristocratic families, major world businessmen, athletes and artists.
In 1981, a mosque known as the King Abdulaziz Mosque – La Mezquita del Rey Abdelaziz – was built on the Golden Mile. Next to the mosque is the summer palace of the King of Saudi Arabia, Mar-Mar, one of the largest private mansions in Spain. Also nearby is another palace, Al Riyadh, owned by the king’s brother Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, and the Khaldiyah estate, owned by the Syrian multimillionaire Wafik Reed Said. A complete list of celebrities who bought real estate on the Golden Mile or came here on vacation would take more than one page.
Infrastructure and beaches of the Golden Mile
In addition to hotels, restaurants and boutiques on the Golden Mile in Marbella, you can find several shopping centers, car dealerships, furniture showrooms, design and architectural studios, offices of various banks, beauty salons, fitness centers, the Six Senses SPA center, the Rally Museum, whose collection includes there are many works by contemporary Latin American artists and sculptors, and much more. Fans of active nightlife can head to the clubs La Suite, Mamzel, Momento and Olivia Valere.
Sports fans won’t be bored either. On the Golden Mile you can practice all kinds of water sports all year round, sailing, tennis at the Puente Romano Tennis Club, padel tennis at the Club de padel en Tenis – El Mirador, golf, Nordic walking, running, cycling, roller skating, etc. d.
Among the restaurants available on the coast, BiBo Dani García, Atelier, Villa Tiberio, Sensations Sushi Bar, Nobu, Thai Gallery, El Grill de Marbella Club and Cube Marbella are especially worth mentioning. Also on the Golden Mile are some of the best beach clubs and restaurants on the coast – Trocadero Playa, Beach Club de Marbella Club, Sea Grill and Besaya Beach.
There are two private British schools on the Golden Mile: The British International School of Marbella and Swans, and several more prestigious private educational institutions are 10-15 minutes away by car.
The best beaches in Marbella’s Golden Mile are:
- Playa del Ancón is a wide sandy beach at the foot of an old watchtower from the 15th century. Torre del Ancón. The beach is very clean, quite calm, famous for its wonderful beach bar Victor’s Beach – one of the oldest in Marbella.
- Playa de Nagüeles is one of the most exclusive beaches in Marbella. Clean, well-groomed, with fine sand, convenient entry into the sea and above average workload.
- Río Verde is another great beach that merges into Puerto Banus just beyond the mouth of the Verde River. Vacationers here have all the necessary services and services, as well as rental of sun loungers and umbrellas, restaurants, beach bars and much more.
Marbella Golden Mile: real estate
The price range in the Marbella Golden Mile area is quite large: from 200,000 € for a studio to 35,000,000 € for a fashionable mansion. Historically, the maximum not only for Marbella, but for Spain in general is the initial price of 80,000,000 € (with a subsequent reduction to 55,000,000 €) for the magnificent villa Casa Loriana on the first line of the sea, built in the early 2000s and put up for sale in 2017 year. Today the most expensive offer is a stately mansion on the territory of the Lomas de Marbella Club urbanization with a stated price of 35,000,000 €.
Property prices in different zones of the Golden Mile:
- La Carolina-Guadalpín (6.733 €/m2): there is a large selection of accommodation, including studios, tourist apartments, houses and villas; price range – from 171,000 € to 9,500,000 €.
- Puente Romano (31,928 €/m2): the most expensive area, offers for sale of real estate can be counted on one hand; There are currently three exclusive apartments and two penthouses for sale; prices – from 1.300.000 € to 22.000.000 €.
- Las Lomas de Río Verde (8,651 €/m2): there is a good selection of properties from small apartments for 320,000 € to villas for 14,800,000 €.
- Lomas de Marbella Club (12,083 €/m2): the choice of housing is large, the prices are quite high – from 330,000 € for 1-bedroom apartments to 35,000,000 € for the mansion we mentioned above.
- Sierra Blanca (6.963 €): zone of fashionable urbanizations, gated residential complexes and large country villas; prices for apartments start from 350,000 €, for semi-detached cottages – from 480,000 €, for detached houses – from 1,125,000 €, for luxury villas – from 7,000,000 €.
- Nagüeles (5,183 €/m2): you can find properties for every taste: from apartments for 245,000 € to mansions for 17,000,000 €.