Zaragoza

Zaragoza gathers Spain's river, its painter and its songs under eleven tiled domes. The basilica of El Pilar spreads its baroque bulk along the Ebro — the pillar of the Virgin's legendary apparition inside, kissed smooth by centuries — and two of its cupolas carry frescoes by the young Goya, the local genius (born at Fuendetodos in the province) whose tapestry-cartoon cheerfulness and black-painting despair the city claims entire, museum and monuments included. Across the old town, the Aljafería answers from another civilisation: the eleventh-century pleasure palace of the taifa kings, its interlaced arches the summit of Spanish Islamic art outside Andalusia, UNESCO-listed with the city's Mudéjar and — opera's footnote — the castle setting Verdi borrowed for Il Trovatore, the troubadour's tower a real address on the Ebro.

The jota, Aragon's leaping song-and-dance, has its capital here — sung at the Pilar fiestas each October when the flower offering builds the Virgin a mountain of blooms and the city dances for a week. The concert record documents the Auditorio de Zaragoza, whose Sala Mozart ranks among Spain's finest symphonic halls, the address of the city's orchestral seasons. Caesar's colony by name — Caesaraugusta — with Roman theatre and walls to prove it, tapas alleys in El Tubo to disprove solemnity: Zaragoza holds the middle of Spain's story, fortissimo.