Spain

Isolated at the end of a narrow strip of land, hammered by the sea on three sides and seemingly unchanged in more than 200 years, Cadiz, at least the old part of town, encapsulates every romantic notion of a sea port. To walk along the seafront at sunset you lose yourself in the maze of narrow streets and marvel at the ungainly gold-topped cathedral, the first thing a returning sailor would see from his ship, is like taking a walk through history.

Cadiz today is made up of two distinct parts - the old city, crammed onto fist shaped headland, and the unappealing new town, stretching back from here to the mainland on either side of the Avenida de Andalucia.

The city claims to be the oldest in Western Europe and dates back to 1100 BC, when the Phoenicians knew it as Gadir, hence the name of its citizens, gaditanos. It was used as a base by the Carthaginians for military campaigns in the peninsula and prospered under Roman rule after Julius Caesar granted Gades, as it became known, the privileges of a Roman town.

The old part of Cadiz can bee seen on foot in a day. The city retains an air of faded grandeur, many of the buildings are in dire need of repair and, although a certain amount of restoration is taking place, the city authorities are not keen to prettify the place too much. A now faded red line through the town leads visitors from the Plaza San Juan de Dios, one of the town's prettiest squares, through the oldest part of the town, the medieval Barrio de Populo, via a number of other lovely streets and squares.