La Almazara

The Spanish city of Girona made gastronomic headlines in 2024 with the launch of Esperit Roca, a food-and-hospitality compound from Catalan culinary royalty the Roca Brothers, and the first full season of the storied restaurant-turned-museum elBulli1846. Now it’s Ronda’s time to shine. La Almazara, a Philippe Starck-designed temple to óleo tourism, opened in Andalusia’s Malaga province last October, includes a museum, working olive press, and restaurant dedicated to the country’s celebrated EVOO. (Spain is the world’s largest producer of olive oil). Starck’s monolithic red cube looks as if it could have fallen from the sky, with the museum’s design nodding to Spanish surrealism, the country’s matador traditions (note the behemoth steel bull horn piercing the building’s facade), and even a representation of a flying machine in the interior hall that was the design of 9th-century, Ronda-born inventor Abbas Ibn Firnas. The museum, surrounded by olive groves, includes interactive exhibits demonstrating the inner workings of oil-pressing, a striking terrace overlooking the surrounding Serranía de Ronda mountains, and, of course, olive oil tastings. “This is the beauty of the LA Almazara paradox,” says Starck. “It is a huge piece of materiality but, once you enter, its weight becomes an abstraction, giving way to pure emotion.”