Girona

Its single open nave, without columns, is counted the widest in Gothic building. The long Baroque stair to the front featured in Game of Thrones, and many pose on it. The cathedral museum keeps the Tapestry of Creation, woven around the late eleventh century.

A walk runs for a good distance atop the medieval wall around the east of the old town, with towers to climb for views over the cathedral and roofs. Entrances are several, so one stretch will do, but once up you cannot leave until the next exit.

Houses with walls rising straight from the river are painted yellow, orange and pink. The best-known view is from the red iron bridge the Eiffel company laid in 1877. After rain, when the river swells, water laps right at their foundations.

A Jewish quarter of narrow stone-stepped alleys knotted like a maze, home to a community until the expulsion of 1492. The Museum of Jewish History shows excavated Hebrew gravestones. Carrer de la Forca, crossing the quarter, follows a Roman main road.

Despite the name, a Romanesque building of the Christian late twelfth century modelled on Islamic baths. At the centre of the changing room a small pool sits under a lantern on eight columns, and that room, light pouring down, gets photographed most.

On a column in the square before Sant Feliu church, a small stone lioness climbs upward. Kiss her bottom, the saying goes, and you will come back to Girona, so people queue on the steps beside it. The church spire, cut off at the top, is easy to pick out.

A Romanesque monastery by the stream north of the walls, now the Girona branch of the Archaeology Museum of Catalonia. Every cloister capital bears different beasts and figures, worth comparing as you go round. It is quiet next to the cathedral crowds.

Each May, for close to ten days, the old town's courtyards, stairs and churches are decked in flowers. Private mansion patios usually locked open up, so many places can be seen only then. Weekends jam the cathedral steps; go on a weekday morning.

Dali's own museum in Figueres, about thirty minutes from Girona by train, rebuilt by him out of an old theatre. Giant eggs line the roof, and Dali lies buried in the crypt below the stage. Tickets carry a fixed entry time.

A medieval village some thirty kilometres north of Girona, its angled stone bridge crowned midway by a gate tower. A Jewish ritual bath, a mikveh, has been excavated here, and a guide holding the key takes you down to it from the tourist office.

Catalonia's largest urban park, by the river past the old town's western edge, where very tall plane trees stand in straight rows to form tunnels of shade. For the Sant Narcis fair in late October it fills with rides and stalls; most weekends bring a market.

A museum of one collector's pre-cinema devices: shadow puppets, magic lanterns, peep boxes and more. Many have cranks to turn or eyepieces to peer into, so children linger, and the rooms follow the steps that led up to film itself.

A village whose houses line the very edge of a basalt cliff in the volcanic Garrotxa, the rock face patterned with hexagonal columns. To see it properly, take the lane down to the river below and look up. Girona is roughly sixty minutes away by road.

A forested crater in the Garrotxa volcanic zone, a small Romanesque chapel standing alone on its grassy floor. From parking on the Santa Pau side, a woodland path climbs over the rim and down; the round trip takes one to two hours.

An old walled town on a Costa Brava headland, its medieval walls and round towers still complete, with a lighthouse crowning the stone lanes inside. A sandy beach lies right under the walls for a swim, and the bus from Girona runs just over sixty minutes.