Illeta dels Banyets

Illeta dels Banyets is a seaside archaeological park in El Campello, about 9 km from Alicante, on a rocky headland joined to the mainland. It holds traces of settlement from the Copper and Bronze Ages through Iberian to Roman times. A wooden walkway with information panels leads around the site.

Illeta dels Banyets is an archaeological site on a rocky headland jutting into the sea at El Campello, about 9 km from Alicante. According to the MARQ museum, it was once a peninsula that became an islet after an earthquake separated it from the coast. In 1943 it was joined to the shore again using dynamite, which destroyed much of the prehistoric necropolis. The oldest traces are oval huts from the Eneolithic, or Copper Age. From the Bronze Age come two large cisterns partly cut into the rock and burials containing metal awls and daggers, ivory bracelets and buttons, and pottery vessels. In the 4th and part of the 3rd century BC there was an Iberian settlement here with two temples, storehouses and houses, interpreted as an emporium, an important trading post. Next to it was a pottery workshop with kilns that produced Iberian amphorae. In the 1st–2nd centuries AD the Romans built a villa with small baths that included warm and cold rooms. The rock-cut fish ponds also date from Roman times: four interconnected tanks, heavily eroded by the sea. The site's name refers to these pools, known as Banyets de la Reina, which were once thought to be baths. Only sporadic traces remain from the Islamic period. The site is opened to visitors by the MARQ museum; a wooden walkway with information panels leads around it, and guided visits are organised on site. The Illeta is one of Spain's 100 cultural landscapes identified under the National Cultural Landscape Plan. According to one review the panels are in three languages, and two visitors note that the walls have been covered with modern stone for protection, which makes the remains harder to read. The Banyets de la Reina pools lie outside the fenced part of the site, and one visitor writes that a path around the ruins lets you walk round the site and see it through the fence. The site lies at the foot of the Torre de la Illeta watchtower, and visitors praise the surrounding cove for swimming and snorkelling, although one mentions poor underwater visibility. One visitor writes that getting here from Alicante by tram is easy.