Santiago de Compostela

Santiago de Compostela is where a continent's footpaths end. Above the tomb identified as the Apostle James's, the cathedral gathered a thousand years of arrival — the Pórtico de la Gloria's carved heaven, newly restored to its painted colours; the Baroque Obradoiro facade rising like a granite altarpiece over the square where pilgrims lie flat to look; and the botafumeiro, the man-high censer that eight tiraboleiros swing on its rope through the transept at full smoking arc, liturgy as aviation, the most theatrical gesture in Christendom. The Camino made the city Europe's first cultural itinerary and still delivers hundreds of thousands on foot each year — blistered, jubilant, converging on the Praza do Obradoiro's stone.

Around the shrine stands a complete granite old town, UNESCO-listed, and a university five centuries old that keeps Santiago young beneath its arcades; the market of Abastos feeds both estates with Galicia's tide. The city's musical establishment centres on the modern Auditorio de Galicia and the Real Filharmonía; the concert record's documented name, Galiópera, is the Galician opera company whose productions carry the lyric repertoire to the region's stages — the touring tradition under its own flag. Rain-polished stone, incense at altitude, arrivals without end: Santiago is the destination other cities only metaphorically claim to be.