Bocairent

The land around Bocairent has been occupied since the Middle Palaeolithic, with cave sites, Bronze Age settlements and scattered Iberian villages spread across the surrounding hills. One Iberian find, a stone lion from the Loma de Galbis, stands among the most significant in the region. The Romans founded the town itself, calling it Bucarius, and left several rural villas on the plain.

The present settlement took shape under Berber tribes during the Moorish period; the geographer al-Idrisi recorded its name as Bukayrān, meaning roughly "pine cone" or "beehive." The town passed through the taifas of Denia and Zaragoza before the Almoravids took control in 1092. It was assigned to the Crown of Aragon by the Treaty of Cazola in 1179, and Christian rule began in earnest after 1245. A Moorish revolt seized the castle in 1248.

In 1255 the town received its founding charter. In 1587 a royal cloth factory opened under privileges granted by Philip II. The town sided with the Archduke in the War of Succession.

Originally placed in Alicante province after the 1833 division of Spain, it was transferred to Valencia by royal order in 1836, a classification that has remained contested given its geographic and historic ties to the Alcoy valleys.

The parish church of the Virgen de la Asunción, built in 1516 on the site of the former Moorish fortress, is the town's most prominent landmark. Originally Gothic, it was later remodelled in the Baroque style and holds works by Juan de Juanes, José Segrelles and Joaquín Sorolla, along with a processional cross and a stone baptismal font with a Gothic base that once served as a public fountain.

About 300 metres from the old quarter, the Cuevas de los Moros are a set of around fifty artificial cave chambers cut into a vertical rock face, arranged across three or four levels with window-like openings. Their most likely use was as a fortified granary.

The bullring, opened in 1843, is the oldest in the Comunidad Valenciana and is carved entirely from rock, with space for 3,760 spectators.

A rupestrian monastery from the mid-period — an underground convent of cloistered nuns hewn from the rock — covers 48 m² and sits beneath two later conventual buildings.

The medieval quarter occupies the high ground of the hill, its steep, stepped and winding streets shaped by the sharp slopes. The snow well of San Blas, to the north of the old town, dates from an earlier century and now houses an interpretation centre on the historic snow trade. The medieval Islamic watchtower of Mariola, a protected cultural monument on the Sierra de Mariola, offers extensive views and can be reached on foot from the Mariola spring area.