El Campanario Properties for Sale

The address on the brass plaques says Bulevar Príncipe Alfonso von Hohenlohe. It runs for six and a half kilometres between the edge of Marbella town and the entrance to Puerto Banús, and the density of amenity it contains per linear metre is difficult to match anywhere on the Costa del Sol. Within this single corridor sit two of Spain's most celebrated hotel resorts, more than twenty named restaurants, an internationally recognised tennis and padel club, a spa that completed a full renovation in 2026, two private beach clubs, and a beachfront promenade that residents use as their daily running circuit — before breakfast.

The road west from Marbella runs flat along the Costa del Sol for forty minutes before the Sotogrande exit materialises off the AP-7 — a slip road into Cádiz province that most property buyers exploring the coast between Marbella and Estepona never take. Those who do arrive at a landscape that bears almost no resemblance to the high-density development that lines the motorway on either side: wide, fenced paddocks of bright Bermuda grass, an atmosphere of unhurried money, and, between July and late August, the most concentrated gathering of serious polo players in Europe.

Three hundred waiters brought up from Seville served 22 kilos of beluga caviar to 1,700 guests on the night Puerto Banús opened in May 1970. Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier were there; so were the Aga Khan and a young Julio Iglesias, paid 125,000 pesetas to sing. Fifty-six years on, José Banús's marina remains the most photographed square kilometre on the Costa del Sol — and, for property buyers, one of the least understood.