La Vila Joiosa

The area around La Vila Joiosa has been inhabited since the Bronze Age. The hill where the old town now stands was first an Iberian settlement, then grew into a significant Roman city known as Alone or Alonis. The exact location of Alonis is uncertain, but evidence points to the present town centre — around the Plaza de la Generalitat, Calle Colón, and the old quarter — where remains of Roman baths and a military installation have been found. The river Amadorio likely ran through or around it.

By the Middle Ages the site had largely emptied, with only scattered farmsteads in the surrounding area. One of these, the Torres farmstead, is mentioned in the Llibre dels Fets, the chronicle of King James I of Aragon. The town was formally founded as a Christian settlement in 1300 by Bernardo de Sarriá, admiral to King James II of Aragon, with the strategic purpose of defending the coast against Muslim maritime raids. In 1321 it passed to the Infante Pedro, Duke of Ribagorza, and then through various noble families until 1443, when it gained the valued status of a royal town.

The 16th century brought a serious new threat: repeated and large-scale Berber pirate attacks on the Alicante coast. King Philip II responded by ordering the construction of new walls, completed by mid-century, which now stand over the earlier fortifications. The same defensive programme produced a network of coastal watchtowers and rural estate towers, as well as the fortress-church of the Asunción, built in the Levantine Gothic style. Once the corsair raids finally subsided at the end of the century, the town began to expand beyond its walls. In 1911, King Alfonso XIII granted it the formal title of city.

The old town as a whole — its streets, its Renaissance walls, and the fortress-church of the Asunción — is listed as a Bien de Interés Cultural, Spain's highest category of heritage protection. The Gothic church of the Asunción doubles as a fortified structure, completed as part of the 16th-century coastal defence works.

Several towers from the same defensive network survive across the municipality. The Torre del Aguiló is a square-plan coastal watchtower built to spot pirate ships. The Torre del Charco is a circular watchtower, now on private land. A different category of structure, the torres de huerta or farmstead towers, relayed alarm signals from the coastal towers inland to rural properties. The Torre de Dalt and the Torre del Baix (also called Torre de Xauxelles, now absorbed into a modern building) are examples of this type. The Torre La Torreta, mentioned in documents from the early 16th century, is thought to date from the first period of Christian resettlement and overlooks the whole of Villajoyosa's farmland. The Torre Simeón was another rural watchtower in the same anti-piracy system.

Among the town's other monuments, the Torre de San José — officially the Torre de Hércules — is a Roman funerary monument. The Santuario de la Malladeta was both an Iberian and a Roman sanctuary. Roman public baths, the Termas públicas monumentales de Allon, have also been identified in the town. Later additions include the Villa Giacomina, a historicist rural villa built in 1920 at La Malladeta, and the Chalet de Centella, an eclectic-style urban residence designed in 1930 by the architect Juan Vidal Ramos. The town also has more than a dozen named beaches along its coastline.