Andalusia

Andalusia is the Spain that most people picture when they close their eyes: whitewashed villages on hilltops, flamenco in a smoky bar, orange trees lining the streets, and a history where Christian, Muslim, and Jewish civilisations built on top of each other for 800 years and left behind buildings that no single culture could have imagined alone. The three cities form a triangle connected by fast trains, and each one has a single building that justifies the entire trip. Seville has the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and the Alcazar, a Mudejar palace where the tilework is so intricate it looks digital. Cordoba has the Mezquita, a mosque with 856 columns and a cathedral dropped into the middle of it, which sounds like architectural violence and looks like genius. Granada has the Alhambra, the last Moorish palace in Spain, where the Nasrid Palaces have the most complex Islamic decoration in Europe and the Sierra Nevada provides the backdrop. But Andalusia is also the region where you eat dinner at 10 PM, where a beer comes with a free tapa in Granada and a cheap tapa in Seville, where flamenco is not a tourist performance but a living art form performed in bars where the tables shake, and where the concept of "on time" is treated as a loose suggestion. The heat from June to September is brutal (40-45C), which is why the Andalusians invented the siesta, the patio, and the cold soup. Come in spring or autumn, when the temperatures are warm, the orange trees are fragrant, and the cities are full but not overwhelmed.