Gibraltar: the monkeys on the Rock

British Overseas Territory on Spain's tip, Gibraltar hosts the only wild monkeys in Europe, freely roaming among the fortifications of its famous Rock.

For the Rock there's a cable car; the rest of the city is explored on foot.

With the cable car, you climb to the Rock of Gibraltar, a limestone promontory 426 meters high, home to the famous nature reserve inhabited by macaque monkeys.

Among the rocks, the St. Michael's Cave, a natural cavity used as a military hospital during wartime, today hosts concerts thanks to its natural acoustics.

Descending towards the center, you walk along Main Street, where English signs and red telephone booths coexist with the Mediterranean climate and light.

Towards evening, the runway of Gibraltar Airport, which crosses the territory's main road perpendicularly, offers one of the city's most unusual spectacles when traffic stops for a plane takeoff.

Gibraltar's Barbary macaques, the only wild free-living primate populations in Europe, are protected by law, though they occasionally steal food or objects from inattentive tourists.

The airport runway, one of the few in the world crossed by a busy public road, is closed to vehicle traffic multiple times daily to allow takeoffs and landings.