Conjunto Arqueológico de los Dólmenes de Antequera

The Menga, Viera and El Romeral Dolmen group is one of the finest and best known examples of European megalithism. The megalithic monuments demonstrate a wide variety of architectural techniques and solutions, but they are generically characterised by the use of large blocks of stone to create chambers and enclosed rooms covered by lintelled roofs or false cupolas. They were used for ritual and funerary purposes.

The megaliths are the first forms of monumental stone architecture from European Prehistory and date back, according to information currently available, to the beginning of the 5th millennium Before Common Era (BCE) during the Neolithic period or, in other words, between 6,500 and 7,000 years ago. For the first agrarian and shepherding communities in Western Europe, megalithic monumental architecture was an ideological means of marking their presence and the roots of their society on the land. As burial chambers, some megaliths are true storehouses of cultural and genealogical identity; and as temples and ritual spaces they were also used for holding propitiatory ceremonies, often linked to the fertility of nature and the commemoration of ancestors.

The communities who constructed the megalithic monuments of Antequera wished to express their symbolic connection with land elements and the cosmos by establishing different alignments with the axes of their corridors. Thus, the architectural project was based on two main lines. The first is defined as the orientation of the corridor of Menga towards a peculiar geographic landmark as is La Peña de los Enamorados. Later on, the tholos of El Romeral is positioned on the path of the Viera-Menga-La Peña axis and its corridor is oriented towards another distinct geographic feature, the El Torcal mountain range. The second line is established by aligning the axis of the corridor of Viera towards sunrise during the equinoxes.