Granada

Granada holds Europe's most visited poem. The Alhambra — palace-city of the Nasrids, its courts of lions and myrtles cut in stucco lace above the town, the Generalife's gardens running water like a second language — is the last and most complete flowering of al-Andalus, and every summer since 1952 it becomes a stage: the International Festival of Music and Dance sets orchestras in the Palace of Charles V and ballet under the Generalife's cypresses, one of Europe's senior festivals in the world's most unfair venue. Manuel de Falla, who lived in a carmen on the Alhambra hill, helped conceive its ancestor — the 1922 cante jondo contest he organised with Lorca — and the city keeps both flames: Falla's house-museum and the Lorca of the Huerta de San Vicente, the poet's summer home, his memory Granada's conscience.

Below, the Albaicín climbs its own UNESCO hill of whitewash and cármenes facing the palace; the Capilla Real holds the Catholic Monarchs in marble; Sacromonte's caves keep the zambra flamenca. The concert record's addresses — the Palacio de Congresos and the city's cultural-centre circuit — carry the year-round seasons beside the festival's summer crown. Pomegranate by name, palimpsest by nature: Granada is what remains when three civilisations refuse to finish with a hill.