Ardales Municipal Market

The hours are the same every day of the week: 8am to 3pm on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Sunday trading is the unusual part, since most covered markets in Málaga province close for it, and it is worth knowing if you are in the area at the weekend.

Eight stalls is a small hall, and it is laid out for a town doing its daily shopping rather than for a crowd. Everything is indoors, so the weather makes no difference to a visit, and the market is wheelchair accessible.

Both cash and credit cards are accepted. Acceptance is not guaranteed to be uniform across eight independent stalls, so it is worth having some cash on you for a single counter that only takes it.

The counters split into five categories: meat and poultry, fish and seafood, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables and prepared food. With only eight stalls, that means one or two traders per category rather than a row of competing butchers, and the fish counter is the one worth arriving early for.

The prepared food stalls are the reason a visitor with no kitchen can still make the trip worthwhile, though the record does not list a bar or a sit-down counter here, so plan to take anything you buy away with you.

Ardales is a small town, so your best bet is to stay centrally in Town Centre, where you can easily walk to the municipal market and the surrounding streets. For a more rural feel, the area around Ardales Countryside has some good rural accommodation options, putting you close to both the market and the nearby Caminito del Rey.

The market is at C. Real, 7, 29550 Ardales, on the street running through the middle of town, so it is a short walk from anywhere in the centre once you have parked. The full postal address is useful for a satnav, since Calle Real is long and the hall sits partway along it.

Ardales is inland from the coast in Málaga province, reached by road from the capital. If you are working through the area, the other markets in the province are listed on the Málaga province page.