Day trips from Frigiliana

Granada was the last capital of Muslim Spain, and the Alhambra is what the Nasrid dynasty left when the kingdom fell in 1492: a palace-city of courtyards, running water and carved stucco set against the snow of the Sierra Nevada. Facing it across the valley, the Albaicín keeps the street plan of the medieval Moorish town — a warren of white houses and cármenes, the walled garden homes.

A day here is really two places at once: the Alhambra hill, with the Nasrid Palaces, the Generalife gardens and the Alcazaba fortress, and the Albaicín opposite, where the classic view looks back at one from the other. It is the fullest and most planning-dependent of the four — the ticket note below is the part to get right.

Ronda straddles the El Tajo gorge, and the Puente Nuevo — finished in 1793 after some forty years of work — bridges the drop of well over a hundred metres between the old Moorish town and the newer quarter. That split-in-two setting made Ronda a fixture on the Romantic traveller's route and has drawn writers ever since; the town still trades on the drama.

The old side keeps its Moorish and Renaissance layers — churches, palaces, the Arab baths down by the river — while the newer side holds the Plaza de Toros, one of Spain's oldest bullrings, and the Alameda del Tajo, a garden balcony over the cliff. It is wine country too, the Serranía de Ronda.