Ten top Spanish towns

By EWAN McDONLAD

* Barcelona

Where: 628km east of Madrid

Why: In one paragraph? Okay. Wondering at the bizarre genius of Gaudi's whimsical architecture; people-watching and strolling among the look-at-mes and the brilliant buskers of the Ramblas promenade; admiring the defiant, proud, independent Catalan (not Spanish) art, food, fashion, style; the oh-so-old of the Barri Gotic's alleys and the wow-so-new of modern boulevards; a cool, chic, cosmopolitan city.

* Madrid

Where: Smack dab in the middle

Why: Not an old or even beautiful city, it's home to the "Golden Triangle" of the world's great art museums - the Prado, Thyssen-Bornemisza, Reina Sofia - within walking distance of one another; vibrant all-night life (and we don't mean clubbing); people-watching and coffee (but don't order anything more expensive) on its bohemian Plaza Mayor (main square).

* Segovia

Where: 93km north of Madrid

Why: Fairytale city of Roman, Moorish and Spanish royal heritage; the extraordinary engineering feat of its Roman aqueduct; great, inspiring Gothic cathedral on the tranquil Plaza Mayor; the Alcazar, its fantasyland castle (true, Walt Disney copied it).

* Salamanca

Where: 206km northwest of Madrid

Why: Graceful, ancient university city built around an elegant Plaza Mayor that looks as though it's been painted for a movie backdrop but is the hub of a sophisticated and social community; two magnificent, attached cathedrals; modern life, too, in a quirky collection of bars and cafes.

* Avila

Where: 109km north of Madrid

Why: Walls. Yes, seriously. Avila is inside a perfectly preserved set of serious 11th- and 12th-century walls with eight gates and 88 towers, more than 20m high. Step inside and you'll get a feel of living in the Middle Ages.

* Seville

Where: 534km southwest of Madrid

Why: Flamenco, bullfighting, tapas, hot days and hotter nights, the extraordinary cathedral ("Let us create such a building that future generations will take us for lunatics," they said, and did), the narrow alleys and quirky bars of the medieval Barrio de Santa Cruz, and the breathtakingly beautiful Alcazar, by turns fortress, palace and gardens dating from 913 (Juan Carlos and Sofia shacked up there while we stayed at the pension over the fence). Outside the historic centre is a remarkable modern city.

* Cordoba

Where: 398km south of Madrid

Why: The mysterious, mesmerising Mezquita. Founded more than 1200 years ago, the Moorish emperors added and embellished their mosque until it became one of the most magnificent buildings in the world - a forest of pillars, red and white arches atop, in architectural, engineering and aesthetic harmony. Outside, the maze of the old Jewish quarter, and peeks into elaborately flower-filled patios (courtyards).

* Granada

Where: 424km south of Madrid

Why: Alhambra, part-hilltop fortress, part-palace of kings, the "Red Castle" that lords it over the city. As an enthralled visitor in 1494 raved, after traversing the gardens, palaces, fountains, towers, courtyards: "So magnificent, so exquisitely executed that even he who contemplates it can scarcely be sure that he is not in a paradise."

* Toledo

Where: 77km south of Madrid

Why: An open-air museum, it's a remarkable medieval hilltop city of monuments and twisting lanes, religion (home of the Spanish Catholic Church for many centuries), folklore and high art, thanks to El Greco doing his best work here.

* Ronda

Where: 649km southwest of Madrid

Why: Because you'll want to see at least one of Andalusia's white villages, and this is the most accessible; because you've read Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls; because of its unique, awe-inspiring position, straddling a 100m-deep river gorge, deep in the mountains but only an hour from the Costa del Sol.