Travel || 10 Things to do in Gibraltar

Posted on November 12, 2018

Gibraltar was one of the most surprising places that I visited this year. I really had no great assumptions about it and didn’t really know what to expect at all. Was it going to be a little mini-Britain off in Spain? (It is a British Overseas Territory, the official language is English and they have red phone boxes and sing ‘God Save the Queen’ and all that.

The answer turned out that it was a little bit of everything. A Spanish influence overlaid what otherwise could have been a Northern working town (for some reason there were Yorkshire and Mancunian accents everywhere!), but shares a maritime border with Morocco and is overlooked by a very impressive natural feature.

Gibraltar is small and densely packed. You could easily walk the perimeter in a day. It has an area of 2.6 square miles with a population of 30,000.

But readers, I fell hard for the charms of Gibraltar and it was mostly because of those little monkeys, the macaques.

10 Things to do in Gibraltar

1. Go up the Rock.

The most famous feature of Gibraltar is the Rock. Similar to the Mona Lisa, I’d heard complaints about the Rock of “oh it’s just smaller than we expected.” I definitely didn’t think that was true. It’s impressive and the views are glorious. When in Gibraltar you must go to the top of the Rock. I completely understand why so many celebrities got married on the Rock. (Including John Lennon and Yoko Ono.)

2. See the macaques at the Apes Den.

I will hold my hands up and completely admit that the biggest reason that I fell for Gibraltar was the macaques. These delightful little monkeys are all over the Rock area. They are friendly, they run around, the clamber over taxis and they are generally just adorable. But for goodness sake, do not feed them!

If you haven’t seen enough macaques already, you can visit the Apes Den, that’s (you guessed it) a place where you can see the monkeys. It’s a large platform halfway up the Rock where the macaques like to congregate. It’s the only population of wild monkeys in Europe and no one is entirely sure how they got to Gibraltar hundreds of years ago.

3. Visit Gibraltar Museum

Gibraltar Museum celebrates the culture and history of the area, and includes some open air archaeology exhibits and a Neanderthal skull. One of my favourite facts about Gibraltar Museum is that there is a massive 26 ft model of the area (that’s not my favourite fact) based on a survey completed by Lieut. Charles Warren R.E. (that is my favourite fact). If that name doesn’t ring any bells, which really it shouldn’t, all you need to know is that later in life, when he was finished surveying Gibraltar, he was the lead investigator on the Jack the Ripper investigation.

4. Go down into the depths of St Michael’s Cave.

I’m from New Mexico originally, and I’m somewhat of a cave snob since I grew up going to Carlsbad Caverns in the Guadalupe Mountains. Carlsbad has Lechuguilla Cave; the deepest cave in the United States, extending down 1,604 feet. Surveyors have mapped more than 120 miles of cave passageways. But that is completely off topic. The moral of the story is I like my caves to be impressive.

There are more than 150 caves in the Rock, but St Michael’s is the most visited one. It probably takes about 30 minutes to walk around St Michael’s and the cave itself is beautiful. But my favourite thing about it are some of the legends and rumours. Morocco is only 15 miles away from Gibraltar so it was believed that on one end of the cave that there was a subterranean Ley tunnel that passed under the Strait of Gibraltar and that the Barbary macaques got to the Rock this way.

5. Lay out on the beach.

Gibraltar is a little place, but it’s also a peninsula. Since it’s surrounded by water on three sides, and the coldest average temperature is January, where it can get down to a whopping 16 C (insert sarcasm here), it’s understandably a great place to go to the beach. There’s Catalan Bay, Camp Bay, Little Bay, Easter Beach, Western Beach, Sandy Bay.

6. Visit the Moorish Castle

Moorish occupation of Gibraltar lasted for a good chunk of its history. From 711 to 1309 and then again from 1350 to 1462, a total of 710 years. The castle was built during the first occupation in 711, and the upper part of the castle tower, the Tower of Homage, is the highest tower of the period of Islamic rule in the Iberian Peninsula. The castle is on the back of the £5 note in Gibraltar and housed a prison until 2010, when it was turned over to tourist viewings.

7. Take a picture at Europa Point

Europa Point is at the Southernmost end of the Rock of Gibraltar, and it is the southernmost point of Gibraltar. On a clear day, you can see North Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar, including the Rif Mountains of Morocco and Ceuta. There’s also a lighthouse there and both a mosque and a Catholic shrine to Our Lady of Europe.

8. See Nelson’s Anchorage

So if you’ve heard anything about English history, you’ve probably heard something about a little guy called Admiral Lord Nelson. You may have even seen his column in London. After Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar (a battle that meant that Napoleon and the French could no longer challenge Britain at sea), his ship, the HMS Victory was towed to Rosia Bay in Gibraltar. Nelson’s Anchorage is where his body was brought to shore and transferred from its barrel of brandy to its barrel of alcohol for the return journey back to England.

9. Walk along O’Hara’s Battery

O’Hara’s Battery is an artillery battery on the southern end of the Upper Rock, built in the 1700s and used in all the wars up to World War II. It’s no longer a military site, but the views are great.

10. Visit Trafalgar Cemetery.

Some sailors and marines from Nelson’s victory were buried there. But there are also a lot of other graves from the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars there. It’s one of the oldest cemeteries in Gibraltar and also houses a monument to the Battle of Trafalgar.