Granada

The guitarist Andres Segoiva described Granada as “a place of dreams, where the Lord put the seed of music in my soul”. Granada was first settled by native tribes in the prehistoric period, and was known as Ilbyr. When the Romans colonized southern Spain, they built their own city here and called it Illibris. The Arabs, invading the peninsula in the 8th century, gave it its current name of Granada. It was the last Muslim city to fall to the Christians in 1492, at the hands of Queen Isabel of Castile and her husband Ferdinand of Aragon.

The name Granada is ancient and mysterious. It may mean "great castle", for the Roman fortress that once stood on the Albaicin Hill. When the Moors came here, the town was largely inhabited by Jews, for which they called it Garnat-al-Yahud - Granada of the Jews. The Jews are said to have been one of the first peoples to settle in Spain, even before the Romans.

The Albaicín, an enchanting maze of Moorish houses and twisting alleyways, is Spain’s best-preserved Arab quarter and the only part of the Muslim city to survive the Reconquest intact. This corner of the city, which clings to the hillside opposite the Alhambra, is where one feels closest to Granada’s Moorish ancestry. A fortress was built here in the 13th century and there were once 30 mosques. Along the cobbled alleyways stand cármines, villas with Moorish decoration and gardens, secluded from the world by their high walls.

The Sacromonte hill, which overlooks the city from the North, is famous for its cave dwellings, once the home of Granada's large gypsy community.