La Safor

It has vestiges since the Bronze Age, going from the Roman period to the establishment of the Saracens.

How to arrive

Rebollet Castle is 1.5 kilometres southeast of La Font d’en Carròs, in the direction of the nearby town of Oliva. From the road that joins the two towns where a steep asphalted road leaves from and reaches the foot of the walls. The fortress was located, dominating the coast and the zone that was watched by it, on an extended hill of 150 metres of altitude. Its name seems to come from the existence in its surroundings of a town, today disappeared, called Rebollet, Reboylén or Rebola.

Epoch
S.VIII
Primitive use
Defensive
Style
Islamic architecture

La Font d’en Carròs and the castle were under Islamic rule until 1239 when it was conquered by Pere Ximen Carròs, admiral of the Catalan and Majorcan Navy. El Rei Jaume I in 1240 granted the castle and the lands to En Carroç (in Carròs) who fortified it and built a church on the site.

The castle was occupied and destroyed in 1364 by the Castilian troops of rei Pere during les Guerres de la Unió (the Wars of the Union). Recovered by the Aragonese, it was rebuilt by its owner at that time, Berenguer de Vilaragut, in 1368.

In December 1598 a strong earthquake destroyed the area, demolishing much of the structures of the fortress, which from that moment remained totally abandoned

The complex, formed by two defensive enclosures, also presents two different constructive phases: an Islamic, of which there are few remains located mainly in the upper enclosure, and another Christian that would correspond to the reforms carried out after the Christian Conquest and the Wars with Castile which are the ones that have survived the best. The entrance to the fortress is by a door that opens to the extreme west. Attached to wall sections made of mudwall, of which 67 metres have been conserved, la torre de l’homenatge (the tribute tower) stands up, quadrangular and built with masonry and brick with reinforcements of ashlars in the corners. This tower seems to date from the 15th century, when the castle already had a residential character and had to have three floors and a groin vault on which el pas de ronda emmerletada would be arranged.

Attached to the interior of the northern end of the wall we find a cistern. Next to it there is a tower that defends a secondary access. Also there are remains of other towers that reinforced the enclosure and that seem to be made by Christians later. Although the castle is currently abandoned and in ruins, there are enough structures standing to make it advisable to visit.