Marbella History: The Marquis, the Prince and the Club Marbella history begins with a marquis and a prince: how Ricardo Soriano discovered a fishing town and Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe turned a pine-shaded finca into the Marbella Club in 1954. Every resort town has an origin story, and this one starts with an engine Before the yacht marinas and the Michelin stars, Marbella was a modest fishing town of a few thousand people. The figure usually credited with spotting its potential first is an unlikely one. Ricardo Soriano, Marquis of Ivanrey, was a racing driver, an aviator and a businessman who moved in Madrid's high society in the 1930s and 40s. He was the first of that world to buy land along what is now the Golden Mile, and he opened one of the earliest country retreats in the area, a rural escape where his circle could ride, hunt and breathe sea air far from the capital. Soriano did not build a resort. What he built was a rumour: that there was a stretch of coast where the light was extraordinary, the fish was fresh and nobody asked questions. High society travels on exactly that kind of rumour, and it travelled. The prince, the Rolls-Royce and a picnic among the pines In 1946, Prince Maximilian von Hohenlohe-Langenburg heard about the Mediterranean life his cousin Soriano described, and set off from Madrid in his Rolls-Royce Phantom to see it for himself. Somewhere along the coast the family stopped for a picnic in a pine forest by the sea, and by the family's own account the decision was made more or less on the spot. His son, Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe, returned in 1947 and bought an old finca of fig trees and pines called Santa Margarita. In 1954 it opened its gates as the Marbella Club, twenty bedrooms, a dining room and a bar set in the old farmhouse. It was the first luxury hotel in Marbella, a town known until then mainly for its fishing fleet. A guest list that never needed advertising The Marbella Club worked for a simple reason: Alfonso knew everyone. Aristocrats came because he was one of them, and film stars came because the aristocrats had. Through the late 1950s and the 1960s the names passing through the club gates included Ava Gardner, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot and Grace Kelly, with the Duke of Windsor appearing in early guest lists by several accounts. The Champagne Room, added in the early 60s, became a discreet salon for a jet set that preferred Marbella precisely because it was quieter than the Côte d'Azur. By 1967 the hotel's own chronicle describes an avalanche of aristocrats, dignitaries and celebrities that had Marbella rivalling Saint-Tropez and Monaco without ever losing the understated tone that set it apart. Low buildings, pine shade, no towers near the shore: the physical grammar of today's Marbella was written in those years, and the planning habits it created still shape what gets built, and what does not. Why buyers should care about any of this The Golden Mile exists because Soriano bought land when nobody else wanted it, and the town's international character exists because the Hohenlohes opened their garden to friends with famous faces. Discretion became the local industry long before it became a marketing word. That is the inheritance buyers still pay for today, and the town signs it into its own addresses: Avenida Ricardo Soriano, Bulevar Príncipe Alfonso de Hohenlohe. This is the first part of a short series. The second looks at the history of Puerto Banús and the 1970 gala that turned a construction site into a legend, and the third follows the royals who came later, from King Fahd to Princess Diana. For anyone weighing the area today, the Marbella New Homes team tracks the micro-markets that grew out of this history, from the Golden Mile to the hills of Elviria, and helps buyers separate genuine pedigree from a good story.