The town commands a fine vista atop a sandstone ridge, from which the peak of Sierra de San Cristóbal [es] and the Guadalete Valley can be seen.

[3] The neighbouring municipios are Espera and Bornos to the north, Villamartín to the north-east, El Bosque and Prado del Rey to the east, Benaocaz and Ubrique to the south-east, Algar and San José del Valle to the south, and Jerez de la Frontera to the west.

[5] In 1969 a hoard of 28 solidi was recovered in a building of the San Rafael farmstead in the municipality of Arcos de La Frontera.

[3] During the Arab-muwallad conflict at the end of the 9th century in the region of Seville, the rebel castillos of Arcos, Jerez and Medina Sidonia were assaulted by the troops of the emir ʿAbd Allāh.

After the civil war and the fall of their protectors from the Caliphate of Cordoba, they became independent at the beginning of the 11th century in the territories of the old cora of Sidonia: Cádiz, Qalšāna (Calcena), Jerez and Arcos.

[citation needed] From 1145 to 1147 the region of Arcos and Jerez was briefly a taifa under dependency of Granada, led by Abu'l-Qasim Ahyal.

[citation needed] The Almohad caliph Yaʿḳūb al-Manṣūr, in his campaign of 1190 against Portugal, concentrated his troops at Arcos de la Frontera; from there he dispatched his cousin al-Sayyid Yaʿḳūb b. Abī Ḥafṣ against Silves, while he himself proceeded to lay siege to Torres Novas and Tomar.

[3] During the Andalusian campaign of the Marinid emir Abu al-Ḥasan — which resulted in his defeat at the battle of the Salado or Tarifa in 1340 —, his son Abū Mālik was ambushed in 1339 near Arcos by the Andalusian Councils and killed by the Barbate river marking the frontier between the two countries.

In Cuesta of Belén, in the entrance to the historic center, was one of the three city gates in medieval times, called Puerta de Jerez, which was torn down in 1852.