For four years I lived an hour up the coast and never once drove down. When I finally did, honestly, most of what I thought I knew about Gibraltar turned out to be out of date or just plain wrong.
It’s a strange little place. 6.7 square kilometres of British Overseas Territory bolted onto the bottom of Spain, with its own pound, its own frontier, its own people, its own language, and about 300 wild monkeys living on the mountain above the shops.
The Rock is also one of the two Pillars of Hercules, which the ancient world treated as the end of the known world. Neanderthals lived in the caves at the foot of it. There are roughly fifty kilometres of tunnels cut through the inside of it.
So it throws up a lot of questions before you go, and a good half of the answers online still tell you to ride a cable car that hasn’t moved since 2025.
Here’s what I can tell you, from two days there in August.
Questions About Gibraltar
I’ve written most of these up at full length too, so follow the link if you want the working behind an answer.
Is there passport control between Spain and Gibraltar? On the day we crossed there was nobody at the frontier at all.
We drove up to it, waited to be stopped, and simply weren’t. Bring your passport anyway, because what happened to us on one afternoon isn’t the law.
What language do people speak in Gibraltar? English is the official one, but the language of the place is Llanito, sometimes written Yanito.
It’s a genuine mix of Andalusian Spanish and English with Genoese, Maltese, Portuguese and Hebrew in it, and speakers swap from one language to the other in the middle of a sentence without stopping for breath. It isn’t bilingualism, where you pick a lane and stay in it. It’s one thing made out of several, and I think it’s easily the most interesting fact on this whole page.
Who are the Gibraltarians? Most Gibraltarian families come from Genoese, Maltese, Spanish and Moroccan Jewish stock rather than from Britain, and they voted to stay British in a referendum in 1967. They still mark the date, 10 September, as National Day. So calling the place British or Spanish rather misses who actually lives there.
Is the Rock one of the Pillars of Hercules? It is. The Rock is one pillar and Jbel Musa in Morocco is the other, 24km across the water, and you can see it beautifully from Gibraltar on a clear day.
Is there a World Heritage Site in Gibraltar? Yes, and hardly anybody mentions it.
The Gorham’s Cave complex on the eastern side was listed by UNESCO in 2016 for its Neanderthal occupation. The first Neanderthal skull ever found came out of Forbes’ Quarry here in 1848, years before the one in the Neander Valley that gave them their name.
How much of the Rock is hollow? More than you’d believe.
The tourist board puts the tunnel network at 34 miles, so around 50km, cut into a mountain that’s only a few kilometres long. Two stretches are open to visitors, the Great Siege Tunnels that the garrison hacked out during the Great Siege, and a separate, much bigger Second World War system. This is the deepest and most interesting layer of Gibraltar and it’s why the Rock is worth a day of anyone’s time.
Can you use euros in Gibraltar? Nearly everywhere, yes, but you’ll be given a poor rate for the privilege. The real currency is the Gibraltar pound, worth exactly one pound sterling.
Is the Gibraltar cable car open? It isn’t. It shut on 18 November 2025 for a full rebuild and nobody expects it back before 2027.
Can you walk up the Rock of Gibraltar for free? You can walk the lower roads for nothing. The Upper Rock Nature Reserve is ticketed, and the money is collected at four pedestrian gates, Jews’ Gate, the Moorish Castle, Devil’s Gap and Market Place Bus Station, and the Moorish Castle one was closed for improvements when we went.
How long does it take to cross the border? Going in it took us under two minutes. Coming out is slower, and much harder to predict.
Walking around Gibraltar takes how long? You can cross the town centre in about twenty minutes, which makes it a far easier place to do on foot than Marbella, where the highlights sit kilometres apart. The Upper Rock ate a whole day and about 30,000 steps.
Is Gibraltar expensive? The Upper Rock is.
Everything else really isn’t. A bus is £1.80, or £2.40 return, eight hours of parking came to £8.50 and a night at Ocean Village was £20.10.
What food is Gibraltar known for? Calentita, officially, though I should say plainly that we didn’t see it on one menu in two days. What lands on your plate is British and Indian.
Is Gibraltar more British or Spanish? British in its flags and its paperwork, Mediterranean in its weather and in how people live. And Gibraltarian underneath both, which is the bit the question tends to skip.
How many days in Gibraltar is enough? One good day does the Rock and the town, and I’ve laid that out in one day in Gibraltar. If you’re off a ship, try Gibraltar in 3 hours.
Can you walk into Gibraltar from Spain? You can, and the path takes you straight across a working airport runway, which is honestly one of the best ways I’ve ever arrived anywhere.
Does Gibraltar have hop on hop off buses? Not really. There are tour minibuses doing the Upper Rock loop, plus five ordinary public routes for everywhere else.
What’s at Europa Point? The southern tip, reached through two road tunnels.
There’s a lighthouse, a mosque we photographed and then ran out of time to go inside, and a walk along turquoise railings that makes it prettier than it has any right to be. The middle of it is a bit manufactured, a stadium and some buildings, so stay out on the edges by the rocks.
Is it safe to walk around Gibraltar? Very.
I walked the town after dark and never felt uneasy once. It’s the heat and the terrain that’ll get you, not people.
Am I covered by the NHS in Gibraltar? Not by the NHS as such.
Gibraltar runs its own service, the Gibraltar Health Authority, and UK visitors get emergency and medically necessary treatment under a reciprocal deal, with a UK GHIC or an EU EHIC accepted. We never had to find out for ourselves, so do check with the Gibraltar Health Authority first.
Is Gibraltar part of Africa or Europe? Europe, right at the bottom of the Iberian Peninsula. Morocco just happens to be sitting there in plain view across the strait.
Gibraltar Has No Passport Check, and That Is New for Some of Us
Of everything on this page, this is the one that actually mattered to me, so I’m putting it first.
We’re South African, Jethro and I. Four years in Spain on temporary residency, NIE numbers, residency cards, the lot, and for all four of those years the one place I couldn’t just decide to go on a Tuesday was the territory an hour down the road. I’d convinced myself our South African passports would be pulled apart at the frontier and I didn’t fancy losing a day off to finding out.
Then the border gates came down. We drove up braced to stop and there was nobody there.
No booth, no queue, nothing to explain ourselves to. We just kept driving.
Which is quite something when you know the frontier was shut completely in 1969, opened to people on foot again in 1982 and only fully reopened in 1985.
Getting back out is the slow direction, because the old zigzag lanes are still in place and squeeze everything down to walking pace. On a Friday at 3pm that cost us roughly two extra minutes.
Bring the passport regardless. Nobody checking on one August afternoon isn’t the same thing as nobody checking, and rules like this move.
The Cable Car Has Been Closed Since November 2025
Nearly every guide out there will still tell you to take the cable car to the top. It shut on 18 November 2025 for the biggest rebuild it’s had since it opened in 1966, and it isn’t due back until 2027.
That changes a lot more than it sounds like it does. Getting to the summit is now the fiddliest part of the day to plan and the easiest place to be quietly overcharged, and that steep staircase running beside the old cable car line has turned into the main way people come down.
A shuttle seat with entry bought together was £40, while the taxi rank wanted £60 for the same thing. Getting around Gibraltar has the whole business written out properly.
The Macaques Have Rules, and They Are Consistent
About 300 Barbary macaques live up here, the only wild monkeys in Europe, and they’re the thing from that day I’ll remember longest. Loads of people come purely for them and I’d say that’s fair enough.
Spend a day with them and the whole thing comes down to where your bag is.
- In your hand. They’ll go for it, no hesitation.
- On your back. They’ll wander over, have a proper look, and see what they can get away with.
- On the ground. Gone.
One of them posed for a photo like a professional and didn’t touch a thing. I tried exactly the same pose again a bit later and that one went straight for my bag.
Another climbed into a taxi at the top and refused to come out, going through everything inside it. One screamed at me on the steps and I had to stand still for a minute before I could carry on down.
The saddest thing I saw all day was one eating out of a crisp packet a person had just handed over. Please don’t do that.
It’s unkind and it’s also against the law. There’s a £500 fine for feeding them, and the Government of Gibraltar sets out why, which is that our food wrecks their diet and gives them things like diabetes. Letting one help itself counts too, so keep the food out of sight and the bag shut.
Everything Really Is Zigzagged Across the Mountain
If you take one practical thing off this page, make it this one. I couldn’t find it written down anywhere before we went.
Nothing up here is laid out in the order you’d want to walk it. The sights are scattered right across the mountain instead of being strung along one path, so you climb, hand the height back, and climb again. Staring at the map beforehand won’t save you from it.
At the bridge you have to pick. There’s the very steep staircase that follows the old cable car line, or the road, which zigzags up far more kindly and takes you round to the lovely St Michael’s Cave.
Take the road up and the steps down. Those steps are quick going down and honestly brutal going up, and the road is the other way round.
Getting that backwards is the classic way to lose an afternoon here. My legs were sore for days as it was.
There Is a Cloud That Sits on the Summit
They call it the levante. Warm easterly wind hits the Rock, gets pushed up, cools down and parks a cap of cloud on the top while the coast either side of it sits in sunshine.
It was there both mornings and I was genuinely sure we’d picked the wrong week to come. Both days it started lifting around 11am and had cleared off by half twelve.
In August it’s doing you a favour, because it keeps the first half of the day cool enough to walk in. For photos it’s a nuisance, and the fix is just to go up after lunch. There’s more on all of it in the best month to visit Gibraltar.
The Restaurant Signs Are All the Same Colour
We clocked this one on the first evening and then couldn’t let go of it.
Blue background, gold lettering, on basically every restaurant sign in the place. Not most of them.
Chains included, right down to a Burger King tucked into an arched stone building. I’ve no idea what the rule is, I couldn’t find anyone explaining it, and now that I’ve told you, good luck unseeing it.
Main Street Is the Most Overrated Thing Here
I’d built it up in my head as a British high street dropped into the Mediterranean. What I got was a busy shopping strip of the same chains you’d find anywhere, and far less English-feeling than I’d hoped.
The good stuff is beside it rather than on it. Painted macaque sculptures on the corners, a stone chair with John Lennon carved into it, which is a nod to the fact that he and Yoko Ono got married on the Rock in 1969.
The lanes running off it are where the town actually lives, with the old red pillar boxes you know from films. Bomb House Lane and Secretary’s Lane are worth the detour for the names on their own.
And you can see the war history in the buildings even when you’re not looking for it. Military towns get built to be useful rather than pretty, so the older buildings here look nothing like the whitewashed old town in Estepona an hour up the coast, and boarded up ones sit between them in odd contrast to the construction going on at every block.
What Gibraltar Is Actually For
Two things, for me, the hike and the monkeys. Both are brilliant and neither one exists anywhere else along this coast.
I’d give it an extra day for the food as well, which sounds mad until you’ve done four years in Spain and walk past proper fish and chips, an Indian takeaway and a Terry’s Chocolate Orange in the same street. We picked up a curry at Raj’s for the drive home and talked about nothing else the whole way back.
I loved that walk and I still didn’t finish it. We ran out of legs before the Great Siege Tunnels and the Second World War tunnels, which everyone tells me are the best history on the Rock, and I can’t tell you about either of them first hand.
We looked longingly at the Mediterranean Steps and didn’t go near them, because we hadn’t come dressed for a hike like that. The Moorish Castle was off the table anyway, closed for renovation when we were there in August 2026.
That’s three good reasons to go back, and I will.
But I’d still rather do Gibraltar properly for a day than stay in it for three.
More Gibraltar Guides
- The best things to do in Gibraltar, which is our whole two days written out
- Free things to do in Gibraltar, and the point at which free stops
- Where to park in Gibraltar, plus the beach you really shouldn’t drive to
- Getting around Gibraltar for the buses, the taxis and every way up the Rock
- The best month to visit Gibraltar, levante included
I’ve done the same thing for other places I’ve been over at travel questions, including what Malaga’s low emission zone means if you’re in a hire car.
