Heladería Riquelme

Heladería Riquelme has been serving ice cream and pastries from a small shop on Calle Trapería in central Murcia since 1930, making it one of the oldest continuously operating sweet shops in the region. The address sits on one of Murcia city's main pedestrian thoroughfares, which runs from the Cathedral to the Floridablanca gardens, and has been a fixture of the city's daily ritual for nearly a century. The shop's signature product is the helado de limón de Murcia — an ice cream made from the large, thin-skinned lemons grown in the province, distinguished by their high juice content and intensely aromatic zest. The result is a sorbet-weight ice cream that tastes of real lemon rather than flavouring. Equally celebrated is the pastel murciano, a round pastry filled with candied pumpkin (cabello de ángel) and scented with cinnamon and lemon — a confection with Moorish roots that has been produced in Murcia since the medieval period. Paparajotes — Murcia's most distinctive sweet, a lemon-tree leaf dipped in light sweet batter, fried until golden, and dusted with cinnamon sugar — are made daily and available throughout the year, though the Easter and Feria de Septiembre festivals see the largest demand. The shop is small with only a few seats inside and a pavement position popular on warm afternoons. Queues form during summer afternoons and on festival days. The Riquelme family has maintained the operation continuously for nearly a century, and the recipes remain unchanged. Cash payment is preferred at the counter.