Spain

Andalusia5 places

• CádizTown · ●●●●●Arguably the oldest continuously inhabited city in Western Europe, founded by Phoenicians around 1100 BC, packed onto a…
• MálagaTown · ●●●●○The Costa del Sol's capital, long written off as the airport you fly into on the way to a resort, now one of…
• The AlhambraPoint · ●●●●○The last palace of Muslim Spain, a fortress on a hill above Granada whose inner rooms are carved into lace, held by the…
• The Mezquita of CórdobaPoint · ●●●●○A vast former mosque whose interior is a hypnotic forest of red-and-white striped double arches, with an entire…
• Alhama de GranadaTown · ●●●○○A white town built along the lip of a gorge an hour from Granada, with hot water running out of the hillside below it —…

Green Spain (Galicia to the Basque Country)5 places

• BilbaoTown · ●●●●●The city that turned a dying steel port into a template other cities still copy: Gehry's titanium Guggenheim curled…
• Galicia — the Costa da Morte & Cíes IslandsNature · ●●●●●The "Coast of Death": Spain's wild Atlantic edge, named for the ships it wrecked, where granite headlands drop into…
• San SebastiánTown · ●●●●○A Belle Époque city curled around one of Europe's most beautiful urban beaches, and, by many counts, the best place to…
• Santiago de CompostelaTown · ●●●●○The end of the Camino, where pilgrims have walked across Europe for a thousand years to reach one cathedral, and where…
• The Picos de EuropaNature · ●●●●○A wall of sheer grey limestone rising a few miles inland from the wet northern coast, close enough to the sea that…

Catalonia & Aragón3 places

• Aigüestortes & the Vall d'AranNature · ●●●●●Catalonia's only national park: two hundred glacial lakes scattered across granite basins beneath the twin peaks of Els…
• BarcelonaTown · ●●●●○The city where one architect's obsession reshaped a whole streetscape: Gaudí's warped stone and broken tile everywhere…
• Gaudí's BarcelonaPoint · ●●●●○A basilica begun in 1882 and still unfinished, its interior a forest of branching stone columns under coloured light…

The Meseta (Madrid & Castile)3 places

• Extremadura — Mérida, Cáceres & TrujilloTown · ●●●●●Spain's emptiest region holds one of the best-preserved Roman theatres in the world, a medieval walled city so intact…
• MadridTown · ●●●●○A capital with no single postcard monument and, partly because of that, one of Europe's most liveable big cities: three…
• ToledoTown · ●●●○○A whole medieval city crammed onto a rock inside a loop of the Tagus, where for a few centuries Muslims, Jews, and…