What to see in Alacant

Alicante is the provincial capital and the gateway to the Costa Blanca, built beside a harbour that ranked for centuries among the busiest on Spain's Mediterranean coast. The city spreads out beneath Mount Benacantil, topped by the Castillo de Santa Bárbara, and pairs a compact historic centre with a seafront that remains the natural place to walk, meet, or just look at the water.

From Akra Leuké to provincial capital

The earliest documented settlement in the area was the Greek Akra Leuké; the Romans later founded Lucentum, on what is now the Tossal de Manises, around 201 BC. Under Andalusi rule the city was known as Medina Laqant, and it stayed that way until Alfonso X of Castile took it in 1248; it passed to the Crown of Aragón in 1296. Ferdinand the Catholic granted it city status on 26 July 1490. That long history left visible layers across the street plan: the Moorish-era grid of the Santa Cruz quarter, with its whitewashed houses and narrow stairways, and buildings such as the Basílica de Santa María, built in Gothic style on the site of the former main mosque.

The promenade and the market

The Explanada de España, the tree-lined promenade separating the centre from the port, owes its best-known feature to a pavement of roughly 7.5 million marble tiles in red, cream and black, laid in 1959 in a wave-like pattern; the marble came from quarries in Novelda and other towns in the province's interior. A short walk away, the Mercado Central, opened in 1921 beneath a modernist dome, holds close to three hundred stalls and is one of the largest municipal markets in Spain by floor area.

Museums and festivals

The MARQ, opened in its current building in 2002, won the European Museum of the Year award in 2004 for the way it presents the province's archaeology without relying on the traditional glass-case format. Every June, the city devotes a full week to the Hogueras de San Juan, with papier-mâché monuments burned on the night of the 24th, a festival recognised as being of International Tourist Interest. Local food centres largely on rice, cooked in very different ways depending on the neighbourhood and the occasion, from arroz a banda to arroz del senyoret.

Visitors with limited time can follow a walking route linking the castle, the old town and the seafront; our three-day Alicante guide arranges those stops by area of the city.