Granada

Tickets go months ahead; the Nasrid Palaces admit you only at your printed hour. Miss it and only the palaces are lost. The wall script repeats one line: no victor but God. Summer courtyards have almost no shade but in early morning and late afternoon.

A summer palace, set apart from the Alhambra proper across a ravine. A water channel runs down the middle of the garden, still fed from the mountain by the same conduit. The arching jets along it were added in the twentieth century and are not original.

The hill kept its Islamic street plan, so lanes bend along the contours and many end in a wall. A house turning its garden inward with no window outward is a carmen. The cobbles are round and slick, and after rain a flat sole slips going down.

From here the whole Alhambra lines up against the Sierra Nevada ridge in one frame. The terrace is full a good hour ahead of sunset. Guitarists and stalls move in, and by then there is no room at the railing.

The Catholic Monarchs chose to be buried here, so this chapel went up beside the cathedral for them. Under the marble effigies upstairs lie five actual lead coffins, plain boxes of differing size. Cameras are stopped at the door.

Caves dug into the hillside are still lived in as houses. Inside they run cool in summer and less cold in winter, so heating and cooling are barely needed. The flamenco called zambra seats the audience along the walls, dancing down the middle.

A narrow street along the river Darro with the Alhambra hill above your right shoulder the whole way. El Banuelo on it is an eleventh-century Arab bath left almost intact, lit through star-shaped holes cut in the vault.

One sacristy takes all the plasterwork, and no surface is left to rest. What looks like silverwork is wood and plaster. Stand close and the material shows, and you see what the eye was doing.

It counts among the southernmost ski areas on the European mainland, so a winter day can hold skiing in the morning and the coast in the afternoon. In summer the same road climbs to just under the Veleta summit.

A fourteenth-century caravanserai whose gate and courtyard survive, with nothing as complete left anywhere in Iberia. Goods and animals stayed on the ground floor and people slept above; later it served as a theatre and then as lodgings.

A Renaissance cathedral begun in 1523 where the mosque had stood, with Diego de Siloe leading the design. White piers and a gilded round sanctuary make it far brighter than a Gothic church. The Royal Chapel is built against it, yet each sells its own ticket.

A 16th-century monastery, still home to nuns, where the Catholic Monarchs' general Gonzalo de Cordoba lies. Inside the church, painted saints and coats of arms leave no bare patch on walls or vault. Its two-tier cloister wraps a quiet orange-tree courtyard.

An 18th-century baroque church gilded almost from end to end. A narrow stair behind the high altar climbs to a small chamber holding the saint's reliquary. He founded the hospital next door, and medical staff still come to pray.

The Nasrid silk market, a warren of lanes right beside the cathedral. It burned in 1843 and was rebuilt in imitation Moorish style. Mosaic lamps, tiled plates and leather slippers now crowd its narrow passages.

A steep lane climbing from Calle Elvira into the Albaicin, lined with tea houses. You sit on low cushioned benches and order mint tea with honey pastries. Moroccan bag and spice shops mixed in make it look like a North African souk.

The old Jewish quarter on the southern foot of the Alhambra hill, all slopes and small squares. Murals by the Granada street painter El Nino de las Pinturas stay on its lane walls. Locals spend the evening at the bars around Campo del Principe.

Mountain country on the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada, with white villages stacked up the hillsides. Pampaneira, Bubion and Capileira in the Poqueira gorge make one day by bus. Chimneys topped like little hats poke up from flat grey roofs.

The farmhouse where Garcia Lorca's family spent summers, now a memorial inside the Lorca park. Lorca stayed here last, in the summer of 1936, and his desk and piano remain. Visits are guided, at set times.

A 19th-century villa garden on the Alhambra hillside, its ponds and fountains stepping down in terraces. Peacocks roam the paths as they please. The balustrade where the garden ends frames the city and the Sierra Nevada together.

A 17th-century abbey crowning the Sacromonte hill. In the late 16th century, lead tablets inscribed in Arabic turned up in its caves with martyrs' bones and were revered, then exposed as forgeries. Tours go down into those cave chapels.