Marbella is both tabula rasa and palimpsest. It can be anything to anyone. You can meet a rock star in the morning and a member of European royalty in the afternoon. There can’t be many places where two such unique personalities might intersect. To paraphrase Churchill, it is a kaleidoscope, wrapped in a mosaic, inside a melting pot. The result of successive waves of visitors who have left their marks over the years, Marbella is a social archaeological site where generations have lived lives of sun-gilded leisure. Today the popular image of Marbella may be of a sort of European Miami, but one need only scratch this glitzy surface to be taken back to the time when Marbella was a simpler place.

During the 1950s it was a quiet, dusty, traditional village, and today the old town is still a charming warren of streets, some so narrow that you can touch the rough white walls on either side. At Easter the solemn and dramatic religious processions snake through this maze of alleys and squares, as they have for generations. Yet what is really striking about Marbella is how much has remained the unchanged. Historical figures long connected with the coast, including, of course, Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe, may have passed into history, but their presence lives on in those who come after them.