Alicante, the castle above the harbour

Alicante has the kind of setting that makes a castle inevitable. The city spreads along a wide bay on Spain's Costa Blanca, and in the middle of it, right behind the town beach, a single hill of bare rock climbs steeply from the streets: Mount Benacantil, 166 metres high. Anyone who held the top of it held the harbour, the bay and the coast road below, and for more than seven centuries someone has made sure to.

The castle that crowns it is Santa Bárbara, and from the deck of a ship coming into port it is the first thing you see and the last thing you lose sight of.

A castle named for a feast day

The hill was fortified under Islamic rule, when Alicante was part of al-Andalus. Its present name comes from the day it fell. On 4 December 1248, the feast of Saint Barbara, the castle was taken by the Infante Alfonso of Castile, the prince who would become King Alfonso X, called the Wise, and it has carried the saint's name ever since.

Castile did not keep it long. In 1296 James II of Aragon took the castle and ordered the ruined fortress rebuilt, and from then on Alicante's history was bound up with the crown of Aragon and later with Spain as a whole. Nothing is left of the Muslim castle above ground; what you walk through now is the work of the centuries since, rebuilt and extended as the weapons of attack changed.

You do not need to know the history to enjoy it. The castle is a place to wander: up ramps and through gateways, along walls, into courtyards, with the city growing smaller below at every turn. At the very top the view opens in every direction, along the coast, over the harbour where the ships lie, and inland towards the dry hills behind the city.

Up through the rock

There are two ways up. The first is to walk, through the old streets on the city side of the hill and then on up the paths and ramps of the castle itself. It is a climb, and on a hot day a real one, but it is the way to arrive.

The second is more unusual. From the seafront avenue, beside Postiguet beach, a tunnel of more than two hundred metres runs straight into the base of the mountain, and at the end of it a lift rises up through the rock to the castle. It is one of the odder ways to reach a medieval fortress, and a very practical one. Many people go up by lift and walk down, which has the advantage of gravity.

The Explanada, and the city below

Back at sea level, Alicante's great promenade is the Explanada de España, which runs along the harbour under rows of palm trees. Its pavement is laid in some six and a half million small marble tiles, in three colours. It is where the city goes for its evening stroll, and the obvious place to sit with a coffee or an ice cream and look up at the castle on its rock.

Between the Explanada and the hill lie the old streets of the centre and Postiguet beach itself, which is so close to the castle that the rock seems to rise straight out of the sand.

Cruises from and to Alicante

Two of the three cruises here sail from Alicante, and the third calls there.

Fred. Olsen's nine-night Scenic Rivieras of France & Italy sails from Alicante in October, with Mahón, La Spezia, Villefranche, Toulon and Ajaccio among its places.

Fred. Olsen's ten-night Islands of the Mediterranean also sails from Alicante in October, with Ibiza, Propriano, Golfo Aranci, the Amalfi Coast, Stromboli, Milazzo, Valletta, Souda Bay and Piraeus among its places.

Ambassador Cruise Line's fifteen-night Christmas Sun Escape to Spain & Portugal sails from London Tilbury in December, with Vigo, Cádiz, Motril, Cartagena, Alicante, Almería, Gibraltar and Leixões among its places.

If your cruise starts in Alicante, it is worth arriving a day early to see the castle before you sail. If it calls there, I would take the lift up, walk down through the old town, and end the day on the Explanada, looking up at where you have been.