Cordoba

A cathedral nave sits in the column forest under doubled red and white arches. The city council fought it in the sixteenth century; the king allowed it. The reused Roman and Visigothic columns vary in girth. The upper tier of arches makes up that difference.

The footings are Roman and the deck above has been relaid so often that the periods lie in layers. The Calahorra tower at the south end went up to guard the crossing and serves as a museum now. Upstream a few mill ruins split the current where they stand.

A caliph raised a whole new city; seventy years on, civil war burned it. It became a quarry, its stone moving into Cordoba's buildings. Digging began in the twentieth century; only part shows. It lies 8km west; only a shuttle from the visitor centre gets in.

It is one room, ten paces end to end. Hebrew cut into the plaster high on the wall gives its own date of 1315. Only a handful of medieval synagogues survive in Spain, and this is one.

For two weeks in May the courtyards of shared houses stand open and are judged. Pots hang from wall hooks, so watering is done with a tin on the end of a long pole. Queues at the popular ones run over an hour, so take the map and go lane by lane.

Twelve courtyards sit inside one house. They were added one per century, so paving and planting differ from courtyard to courtyard. One ticket covers the courtyards alone and another takes you into the rooms.

The royal stables were founded in 1570 to breed horses for the king, and the Andalusian breed was fixed here. Horses are still kept, and of an evening the yard hosts a show that puts them together with flamenco.

One crucifix and eight iron lanterns stand alone in the square with nothing else to light it, so the place only shows what it is once they are lit.

One waterwheel is left on the bank, and it lifted water up to the castle. Tradition says Queen Isabella had it stopped over the noise, though what stands there now was rebuilt later.

Of the gates left in the wall this one keeps most of its Islamic shape. A water channel and a line of trees run beside the wall from it. In front stands a statue of Seneca, born here.

A riverside fortress a Castilian king built in the 14th century, where the Catholic Monarchs received Columbus. Roman mosaics hang upright on the walls of its great hall. The gardens of stepped pools and orange trees hold people longer than the castle does.

A very narrow dead-end lane off the Jewish quarter, its white walls hung with flowerpots. Turn back from the dead end and the Mezquita bell tower sits framed between the walls. Photos come out better early than in the crowded middle of the day.

Remains of the baths of the 10th-century caliphs' palace, below ground beside the Alcazar. Star-shaped skylights pierce the vaults of the cold, warm and hot rooms in turn. The heating channels under the floor are exposed, showing how the water was warmed.

A 17th-century square enclosed on all sides by arcaded buildings, modelled on the Castilian plaza mayor. It once staged bullfights and markets, and terrace bars ring it now. A morning market runs in the hall on one side.

A few white marble columns of a 1st-century Roman temple, re-erected at the roadside next to city hall. They turned up underground in the 1950s while the city hall was being extended. You view it from the pavement over a fence, so it costs no detour.

A Moorish-era castle crowning a hill over the Guadalquivir west of Cordoba, its towers and walls made whole by an early-20th-century restoration. It was used as a Game of Thrones location. From its top tower you look over the river and olive country.

The Renaissance Palacio de los Paez holding finds from Roman and Islamic Cordoba. Under its new wing, remains of the Roman theatre lie exposed and you walk over them. A bronze stag from Medina Azahara is its prize piece.