23/07/2025
In the 1950s, Prince Alfonso de Hohenlohe —entrepreneur, athlete, and godson of King Alfonso XIII— fell in love with Marbella and, together with a circle of equally visionary friends, helped shape this coastline into the world capital of glamour.
🌴They didn’t build towers — they planted gardens. “Every day, Blas — the butcher from the Ritz — would send the meat by plane from Madrid, and the prince flew in the grass from Mexico,” recalls his cousin, Count Rudi von Schönburg, longtime director of the Marbella Club.
Marbella had the right climate — in every possible sense.
🎷Multimillionaires, artists, dethroned princesses, oil tycoons, friends from the Gotha and true international jetsetters turned Marbella into the place to be. Parties lasted sixteen days. Dinners were scented with citrus and neroli. Conversations flowed in five languages and guest lists that mixed Rothschilds, Goldsmiths and Fürstenbergs with artists and princes. Hosts obsessed over lighting, floral scents, long linen tables and impeccably timed service.
Then another Marbella came along — the one of golden faucets, palatial villas and petrodollars.
Adnan Kassoghi and the Arab elite brought their own kind of opulence, and with it, a taste for lavish celebrations -apart from inspiring the locals for a new trend: the thaub tunics
🎭Stories tell of dining rooms turned into Moroccan souks, torches lining pebble courtyards under jacarandas, gardens transformed into the Feria de Abril, flowers brought by boat from Tangier, and caviar served in soup spoons at The Champagne Room of the Marbella Club — where Brigitte Bardot, Sean Connery and Christina Onassis were seen dancing into dawn under velvet drapes and soft lights, joining Gunilla von Bismarck, in many ways the alma mater of Marbella’s theatrical elegance.
Lessons in atmosphere.
The contrast never broke the spirit — it deepened the code.
Both spirits still linger — just choose your style.
Next post: Kind of venues you can find in Marbella
