Some towns explain themselves the moment you see them, and Villajoyosa Costa Blanca is one of them. You arrive, you turn towards the seafront, and there they are: a row of houses painted red, blue, yellow and ochre, leaning quite literally over the water’s edge.
But what I love most about La Vila, as everyone calls it here,is that it smells of chocolate. Real chocolate. Thirty-two kilometres from Alicante, it’s the capital of the Marina Baixa and one of those escapes people make «for the photos» and end up remembering for everything else.
Let me tell you why it deserves a full day.
Why La Vila is unlike any other coastal town
Villajoyosa has one quirk it shares with no other town in the province: it’s the only one whose old quarter ends directly at the sea. There’s no road in between, no strip of hotels, the houses of the fishing quarter look straight onto the water, with nothing in the way.
Its name, «the joyful town», dates back to the 14th century, when the nobleman Bernat de Sarrià founded the settlement and needed an appealing name to attract inhabitants.
Pure medieval marketing. And its old quarter, listed as a Site of Cultural Interest, still holds the 16th-century walls raised to fend off Barbary pirates, along with a fortress-church, Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, one of only three of its kind in the entire province of Alicante.
The origin of the colourful houses (and it’s not what they’ll tell you)
Here’s the story I most enjoy telling, because there isn’t a single answer: there are several theories, and the truth is probably a mix of all of them.
The best- known one says that fishermen painted their houses in bright colours so they could recognise them from the sea on their way back from a day’s work. The second, more practical, holds that they simply used the leftover paint from their boats, pure seafaring thrift.
There’s a third, lovely one: families supposedly hung sheets or cloths of one colour or another to signal to the fisherman, before he even docked, whether good or bad news awaited him ashore. And a fourth, more superstitious: that the colour served to ward off the evil eye.
What is now an Instagram magnet was born, in fact, as a communication system between the sea and the shore. And that’s the kind of detail that completely changes how you look at a façade.
Where to take the photo: the seafront promenade on Calle Arsenal is the classic postcard. But the spot almost nobody knows is the Puente Antiguo (Old Bridge) over the Amadorio river: from there you see the famous «hanging houses» perched on top of the western wall. It is, by far, the best view of the town.
Why La Vila smells of chocolate
This one surprises everybody. Villajoyosa’s chocolate tradition goes back to the 17th century, when its port became one of Europe’s main landing points for cacao arriving from Venezuela and Ecuador. The industry as such took off in the early 1800s, when an Italian merchant brought the first cacao grinding stone to town.
At its peak there were more than 50 chocolate factories here. Today, three remain: Valor, Clavileño and Pérez.
- The Valor Chocolate Museum (Avenida Pianista Gonzalo Soriano) is the star visit: you follow cacao’s journey from the jungle to the bar, see antique machinery, and it ends with a tasting. Entry is free, and there are tours in English (worth checking times and booking ahead, especially in summer).
- Clavileño, with over 130 years of history, also has a small museum next to its factory, by appointment.
And watch out for a very common mix-up: the Valor chocolate shop is not the same as the factory.
The shop sits near the beach, it’s spacious, and it has sea views. If you don’t have time for the museum, at the very least sit down there for a hot chocolate with churros. And if you come in early August, you’ll catch Xocolatíssima, the town’s chocolate festival in the old quarter.
What else to see and do
- The fishing port and the lonja. My favourite plan, and the most authentic: the boats come in during the afternoon, and the fish auction takes place around five o’clock on weekdays. Watching that bustle is how you understand what this town actually lives on.
- Vilamuseu (Calle Colón, 57). The municipal museum, modern and fully accessible, with Phoenician, Roman and Iberian pieces. It has a children’s section, VilaKids, with workshops.
- Passeig de Sant Pere. It borders Playa Centro, lined with glazed ceramic benches and palm trees. Perfect at sunset.
- The Torre de Sant Josep. A Roman funerary tower, listed since 1990, just outside town. Few people visit it, and it’s worth the stop.
- The murals. On Calle Sant Cristòfol there’s a large mural replicating the coloured houses, and on Santíssima Trinitat, La Mar: a face made up of fishermen, a tribute to the town’s seafaring roots.
- The beaches. Playa Centro offers 1.4 km of fine sand, is accessible and very family-friendly. But if you’re after coves, head to Bol Nou, a beauty tucked between ravines and ideal for snorkelling.
Eating: here you eat fish straight from the bay. Order suquet de peix, caldero vilero or the fritura vilera. And if you fancy a different rice, arròs amb ceba i carabassa is very much a local thing.
When to go and how to get there
Getting here is easy: by car it’s about 30-40 minutes from Alicante on the N-332 or the AP-7 (there’s paid parking on Avenida del Puerto). And by TRAM, the line heading towards Benidorm drops you in La Vila in just under an hour, with no parking worries at all.
If you can pick your dates: at the end of July (24th to 31st) the town celebrates its Moros y Cristianos, a festival of International Tourist Interest, with a landing on the beach at dawn that gives you goosebumps. Outside those dates, any time works: in spring and autumn the town is quiet and the light on those façades is perfect.
How to combine it with Altea
My guide’s recommendation: don’t come to Villajoyosa on its own. It’s a stone’s throw from Altea, and together they make a perfect day out through sheer contrast: La Vila is colour, sea and chocolate; Altea is spotless white, cobbled slopes, and its blue-domed church gazing at the Mediterranean.
It’s one of the combinations people most often ask me for when they want to venture beyond Alicante, and it works especially well as a tailor-made route, where we adjust the timings so you’re not rushing and you have room for the chocolate museum, a wander through the Arsenal quarter, and a long lunch by the sea.
A day trip to Villajoyosa from Alicante really is one of the easiest wins on the Costa Blanca.
Because in the end, La Vila isn’t a town you visit: it’s one you stroll, smell and taste. If you’d like me to come along and tell you all these stories on the way, message me and we’ll put it together 🙂