About
La Molineta is a small collection of holiday villas in the La Molineta hamlet, nestled in the hills just outside Frigiliana in Spain's Andalucía. Each villa has been carefully maintained to offer comfort, character, and a true sense of place.
We're not a hotel chain or a faceless management company. We're hands-on hosts who know every corner of these properties and the surrounding area. When you book with us, you get personal attention, local knowledge, and the assurance that someone genuinely cares about your holiday.
Frigiliana has been voted the prettiest village in Andalucía, and we're biased, but we think it deserves the title. The whitewashed streets, the views from the hills, the warmth of the local community - it's a place that stays with you.
Our Story
La Molineta
La Molineta is a disused sugar, flour and paper mill dating from the seventeenth century, occupying an ancient, possibly pre-Roman, site on the road between Nerja and Frigiliana. Funerary jars from 600 BC have been found nearby, and an elegant Roman doll was unearthed in the grounds.
In 1965, Sir Peter and Lady Wakefield bought the complex of near-derelict buildings during a break between diplomatic postings. They decided not to employ an architect; instead, they slowly and carefully restored the original fifteen houses into the characterful villas that stand today. What could be propped up was saved; the rest was allowed to disintegrate into romantic courtyards and secluded patches of garden.
The earliest photograph we have of the place shows what they took on. Roofs fallen in, window openings empty, the hillside bare, and the terraces below the wall still being worked as farmland. Almost everything standing here today was brought back from that.
The great barn at the heart of the complex - once filled with boulders, pigs and rusting machinery - became the main house, its majestic proportions preserved, its walls given several coats of whitewash, and its original seventeenth-century arches opening onto a swimming pool where the old mill-pool used to be.
Today, four unique villas share this peaceful hillside setting, each with private pools and views that stretch from the mountains to the sea. The spirit of the original mill lives on in the name and character of El Molino Viejo - "the old mill."
Read the 1997 House & Garden feature →
La Molineta in 1965, before the restoration began
Photographed by Tim Clinch for House & Garden, 1997
Your hosts on the ground
Sam & Juve
Sam and Juve manage La Molineta day to day and have looked after the villas for around twenty years. They welcome you on arrival, hand over the keys, and keep the villas, pools and gardens in the shape you see in the photos.
They live in Frigiliana itself, know the village and the coast inside out, and are the people to contact for anything during your stay, from restaurant tips to an extra cot.
Reach them any time: