The destination
Twelve square kilometres of Spain on the North African shore, with more modernist architecture than any city in Africa and four and a half minutes of totality on 2 August 2027.
Until totality
Totality is happening now
Eye protection may be removed only while the Sun is completely covered.
The shadow has passed
The total solar eclipse of 2 August 2027 has taken place. Thank you to everyone who joined us in Melilla.
Counting to 10:48 CEST on 2 August 2027, the moment totality begins over Melilla.
Most eclipse travel treats the destination as a coordinate. Melilla does not reward that. It is a small, dense, unusual city — Spanish, African and Mediterranean at once — and the days around the eclipse are the reason to come rather than the padding around it.
After Barcelona, Melilla holds the largest concentration of modernist architecture in Spain, and the largest anywhere on the African continent. The reason is one architect. Enrique Nieto worked under Gaudí on Casa Milà, arrived in Melilla in 1909 at twenty-six, and never left, building for the rest of his life until his death in 1954. His influence on the architects around him was strong enough that the styles are now difficult to separate.
Nieto designed Melilla’s principal synagogue, its central mosque — built between 1945 and 1947, its façade carrying horseshoe arches and geometric ornament against an otherwise modernist structure — and buildings for the city’s Catholic churches. The city’s plural character is not a slogan retrofitted by a tourist board; it is legible in the buildings.
The old fortified town rises straight out of the sea: successive rings of walls, bastions, magazines and tunnels cut into the rock, looking north over the water. It is the obvious place to understand the city’s shape, and it faces the direction the shadow will come from.
Beaches within the city, a working port, and open Mediterranean beyond. The water is the reason the yacht option exists here at all, and the reason the days before the eclipse are easy to fill.
The cooking follows the population: Spanish, Moroccan, Sephardic and Amazigh traditions in the same small city, with Mediterranean fish as the common ground. It is one of the more genuinely distinctive things about the place, and it is where we spend a lot of our planning time.
The city is compact enough to cross on foot, which matters more than it sounds on eclipse morning: transfers are short, positions are close, and the logistics that will be difficult on the mainland coast that week are manageable here.
Melilla lies inside the band of totality — in its southern portion rather than on the centre line — and records 4 minutes 34 seconds of totality beginning at 10:48 local time, with the Sun about 41° above the horizon. Among Spanish cities only Ceuta records longer. The Sun’s altitude matters: high enough to clear buildings and terrain easily, low enough that the horizon stays in view, which is where the approaching shadow is seen.
Eclipse timings and duration for Melilla per the Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN).
| Ceuta | 288 seconds | |
|---|---|---|
| Melilla | 274 seconds | |
| Algeciras | 266 seconds | |
| Cádiz | 174 seconds | |
| Málaga | 108 seconds |
Durations for Spanish cities inside the band of totality. Ceuta records the longest; Melilla is a close second, and combines its duration with an island-like sense of separation from the crowds expected on the mainland coast.
Eye safety
The Sun must not be viewed directly during the partial phases without a filter made for the purpose. Certified solar viewers meeting ISO 12312-2 block ultraviolet and infrared as well as visible light; sunglasses, exposed film and smoked glass do not, at any number of layers.
Protection may be removed only during totality itself, while the Sun’s disc is completely covered — and must be replaced the moment the first sliver of the photosphere returns. Guests on our programmes are issued certified viewers and briefed the day before, and a member of the team calls the start and end of totality aloud.
Note that ISO publishes the standard but does not certify products, so “ISO certified” printed on a viewer means nothing in itself. We source only from suppliers on the American Astronomical Society’s list of manufacturers whose products have been tested by accredited laboratories.
Tell us how long you have and what you enjoy, and we will shape the days around the eclipse.
Enquiry
Six short sections. Nothing here commits you to anything, and we will not add you to a mailing list.
A member of the team will reply personally, in writing, usually within one business day. If your dates are tight or your group is large, say so in a reply and we will move faster.
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