ALMERÍA is a pleasant, modern city, spread at the foot of a stark grey mountain. At the summit is a tremendous Alcazaba (daily 9am-8.30pm; Oct-Mar closes 6pm; ¬1.50, free for EU citizens), probably the best surviving example of Moorish military fortification, with three huge walled enclosures, in the second of which are the remains of a mosque, converted to a chapel by the Reyes Católicos. In the eleventh century, when Almería was an independent kingdom and the wealthiest, most commercially active city of Spain, this citadel contained immense gardens and palaces and some 20,000 people. Its grandeur was reputed to rival the court of Granada but comparisons are impossible since little beyond the walls and towers remains, the last remnants of stuccowork having been sold off by the locals in the eighteenth century.

 

From the Alcazaba, however, you do get a good view of the coast, of Almería's cave quarter - the Barrio de la Chanca on a low hill to the left - and of the city's strange fortified Cathedral (Mon-Fri 10am-4.30pm, Sat 10am-1pm, Sun service hours; ¬1.80), built in the sixteenth century at a time when the southern Mediterranean was terrorized by the raids of Barbarossa and other Turkish and North African pirate forces; its corner towers once held cannons. There's little else to do in town, and your time is probably best devoted to sampling the cafés, tapas bars and terrazas in the streets circling the Puerta de Purchena, the focal junction of the modern town, and strolling along the main Paseo de Almería down towards the harbour, and taking day-trips out to the beaches along the coast. The city's own beach , southeast of the centre beyond the train lines, is long but dismal.