Visit the ruins of Scala Dei Charterhouse, founded in 1194, whose Carthusian monks introduced viticulture to the region and gave Priorat its name from the prior's authority over seven villages

Taste a Priorat DOQ wine in Gratallops, where René Barbier and Álvaro Palacios led the region's revival in the 1980s

Walk the terraced vineyards on llicorella, the black and red slate soil laced with mica that forces the Garnacha and Cariñena vines deep

Carthusian monks founded Scala Dei in 1194 and planted vines, and the priory's authority over seven villages gave the region its name — Priorat. The soil is llicorella, black and red slate shot through with mica, which holds almost no water and forces old Garnacha and Cariñena vines to send roots metres down to find it. The result is concentrated and expensive. The region had all but died by the 1970s; René Barbier, Álvaro Palacios and a handful of others revived it in the 1980s, and it is now one of only two DOQ regions in Spain.

Priorat: Scala Dei and the Llicorella Vineyards

Find what is left of the castle, the last Muslim stronghold in Catalonia

Go into the Romanesque church of Santa Maria de Siurana

Look down from the cliff to the Siurana reservoir far below

Siurana is a hamlet of a few dozen people at about 740 metres on the edge of a limestone cliff at the end of the Prades mountains, above the Siurana river. Its castle, on a rise in front of the village, guards the only natural way in, and the Christian walls are built over a Muslim fortress: Siurana was the last Muslim stronghold in Catalonia, taken by Ramon Berenguer IV's forces in 1153–1154 after a siege, some years after Tortosa and Lleida had fallen. The Romanesque church of Santa Maria stands in the village, and the Siurana reservoir lies far below, at about 470 metres.

Siurana: The Last Muslim Stronghold in Catalonia

Stand under the royal tombs raised on arches across the transept — the pantheon of the Crown of Aragon

Walk the cloister and work out what the Cistercians were actually after: water, isolation and farmland

Find the monks' dormitory, which is one of the largest surviving Cistercian dormitories anywhere

Work out the founding: given to monks from Fontfroide in 1149, community established 1153

Remember that this is a working monastery again, and that some of what you cannot see is why

Ramon Berenguer IV gave this site to Cistercian monks from Fontfroide in 1149 and the community was established under its first abbot in 1153 — it met everything the order asked for in a foundation: isolation, plenty of water and land to farm. It became the royal pantheon of the Crown of Aragon from the end of the 14th century until the royal house died out, and it is the prototype of the Spanish Cistercian abbey. UNESCO listed it in 1991. Cistercians live in it again, so parts of it are enclosure and closed to visitors.

Poblet: The Royal Pantheon of the Crown of Aragon

Walk along the top of the channel and work out that nothing in the structure is mortared

Work out the fall — forty centimetres over 217 metres, which is what kept the water moving

Stand underneath and look up 27 metres at two tiers of arches

Work out where the water was coming from: twenty-five kilometres away, along the Francolí

Find out why it is locally called the Devil's Bridge, which is a common name for Roman work nobody could explain

Four kilometres north of Tarragona, in pine woods off the old road, a Roman aqueduct arcade stands almost intact: 217 metres long, 27 metres at its highest, two tiers of arches in dry-jointed ashlar with no mortar anywhere in it, and a fall of forty centimetres from the north end to the south to keep the water moving. It carried water twenty-five kilometres into Tarraco along the Francolí. Locally it is the Pont del Diable, the Devil's Bridge, because a Roman structure that good in the middle of a wood needed explaining.

The Ferreres Aqueduct in the Woods

Sit in the amphitheatre, built around the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD below the walls and facing straight out to sea

Find the remains of the Roman circus where the chariot races were run — the medieval town grew over and around them, so they sit inside the old quarter now

Walk the archaeological promenade along the top of the Roman walls

Go out to the Pont del Diable, the Ferreres aqueduct — 217 metres long, 27 metres high, two tiers of arches in dry-jointed ashlar, part of a system that brought water 25 kilometres

Find out about castells, the human towers that started at Valls just up the road as the Ball dels Valencians, first documented in 1712 and on the UNESCO intangible heritage list since 2010

The Romans developed Tarraco during the Second Punic War and it became the gateway through which they took and held the Iberian peninsula — first Colonia Iulia Urbs Triumphalis Tarraco, capital of Hispania Citerior, then capital of the province named after it, Hispania Tarraconensis. It stands on a rock 75 to 90 metres above the sea, which earned it the epithet arce potens Tarraco, Tarraco the mighty citadel. The archaeological ensemble went onto the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2000.

Tarragona: Tarraco, Gateway to Roman Spain

Go into the cathedral of Santa Maria and its cloister, built in the 12th and 13th centuries

Stand in the patio of the college of Sant Jaume and Sant Maties, the only Renaissance patio in Catalonia

Find out who the college was built for in 1564, and what happened after 1610

Walk in the Jardins del Príncep, the town park

Tortosa sits on the Ebro at the head of its delta. Its cathedral stands on the site of a Romanesque one begun in 1158; the first stone of the Gothic cathedral was laid in May 1347, and the Baroque façade begun in the 1620s was left unfinished in 1757. Round the corner the Reials Col·legis are the most important Renaissance buildings in Catalonia: the college of Sant Jaume and Sant Maties was begun in 1564 to educate young converted Muslims, and after the Moriscos were expelled in 1610 it took in the poor boys of the city instead. Its courtyard is the first, and only, Renaissance patio in Catalonia.

Tortosa: The Only Renaissance Patio in Catalonia

Walk the cloister and work out that it is on the outside of the church, looking out over the plain

Climb the octagonal bell tower for the view over Lleida and the Segrià

Work out what the bare interior means: this was a barracks for more than a century after Philip V took it

Find the carved capitals that survived the conversion, and the ones that did not

Look down at the modern city and work out why the cathedral is up here and nothing else is

The old cathedral of Lleida stands on the hill above the city with a cloister on the outside of the church rather than tucked behind it — an open arcaded gallery with a view over the plain, which is unusual to the point of being unique. After the War of the Spanish Succession Philip V turned the whole complex into a military barracks, and it stayed one for well over a century, which is why the interior is bare. It was slowly recovered in the 20th century. The octagonal bell tower is one of the tallest Gothic bell towers in Catalonia.

La Seu Vella: A Cathedral Used as a Barracks

Climb the Mudéjar towers of Teruel, the Torre de El Salvador and the Torre de San Martín, built in the 12th and 13th centuries and part of the 'Mudéjar Architecture of Aragón' UNESCO World Heritage Site

Visit the Cathedral of Teruel, with its Mudéjar tower and ceiling

See the mausoleum of the Lovers of Teruel, Diego de Marcilla and Isabel de Segura, whose tale is dated to 1217

Taste jamón de Teruel, the region's cured ham

Mudéjar is what happened when Muslim craftsmen kept working in Christian Spain after the reconquest — brick, glazed ceramic and geometric patterning applied to churches and towers, an Islamic building tradition serving a Christian one. Teruel has the best of it, and the towers of El Salvador and San Martín are on the UNESCO list. The town's other possession is the Lovers of Teruel: Diego and Isabel, dated to 1217, who by the story died of grief within a day of each other and lie in an alabaster tomb with their hands not quite touching.

Teruel: Mudéjar Towers and the Lovers

Tour Peñíscola Castle, built by the Knights Templar between 1294 and 1307, where the antipope Benedict XIII, Papa Luna, lived from 1415 to 1423 and where El Cid was filmed after its 1960 restoration

Walk the Serra d'Irta Natural Park behind the coast south of Peñíscola

Walk the old town on its rock, joined to the mainland by a narrow strip of sand

Peñíscola is a fortified town on a rock joined to the mainland by a sand bar, with a castle the Knights Templar built between 1294 and 1307 on top of it. Its strangest period came when Benedict XIII — Papa Luna, the Avignon antipope deposed by the Council of Constance — refused to accept that he was not pope, retreated here in 1415 and held out until he died in 1423, excommunicating everyone who disagreed with him. The castle was restored in 1960 and immediately used as a location for El Cid.