Луго

Lugo is the only city on earth still completely embraced by Roman walls. The third-century circuit of Lucus Augusti survives whole — two kilometres and change, ten gates, dozens of towers, and a walkway on top wide enough for the evening paseo: UNESCO listed the walls as the finest surviving example of late Roman fortification anywhere, and the lucenses treat them simply as their elevated street, jogging above seventeen centuries. Each June the city moves back inside them in earnest: Arde Lucus, the Roman festival, fills the intramural streets with legions, druids and a costumed citizenry re-founding Lucus Augusti with a devotion that has made it one of Spain's great historical fiestas.

Within the circuit stand the cathedral — where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed perpetually, a privilege the city carries on its coat of arms — and the tapas custom the rest of Galicia envies: in Lugo the free tapa with every drink remains constitutional. The Miño below offers Roman baths still steaming under the old bridge. The concert record documents the Auditorio Gustavo Freire, the modern hall named for the Lugo composer and bagpiper whose melodies entered Galician tradition — the touring seasons play under a gaiteiro's name. Walls without a gap, a table without a bill: Lugo encircles its pleasures completely.