Walk between Pampaneira, Bubión and Capileira, the three villages of the Poqueira gorge on the south slope of the Sierra Nevada

Look at the flat-roofed houses of the Alpujarras, the North African mountain architecture that the Muslim inhabitants of Al-Andalus brought to these terraced hillsides

Buy a handwoven jarapa rug in Pampaneira, in the Alpujarran weaving tradition

Walk part of the GR 7 long-distance footpath that crosses the Alpujarras

The Alpujarras are the south slope of the Sierra Nevada, terraced and irrigated on a system the Muslims built and the villages still use, with flat-roofed houses of slate and clay that belong architecturally to North Africa rather than Spain. This is where the Moriscos were finally pushed after Granada fell, and where they rebelled in 1568. Pampaneira, Bubión and Capileira climb the Poqueira gorge one above another, and the walk between them is short, steep and the best introduction to the range.

The Poqueira Gorge: Pampaneira, Bubión and Capileira

Go into a secadero and work out that altitude, not technique, is what makes this ham possible

Taste a ham cured for two years against one cured for a year and find the difference

Walk the three barrios stacked up the slope — Alto, Medio and Bajo

Work out the climb: 190 metres from the Barrio Bajo to the Barrio Alto, whose highest house is at 1,610 metres

Walk up towards Mulhacén from here, which is the standard approach to the highest peak in mainland Spain

Trevélez sits on the south-west flank of Mulhacén, the highest peak in mainland Spain, where the Trevélez river meets a smaller stream, and its three barrios climb 190 metres from bottom to top — the highest house in the Barrio Alto reaches 1,610 metres. That altitude is the whole industry: the air is thin, cold and dry enough that ham can be cured here with nothing but salt and time, no smoke and no additives, over as much as two years. Jamón de Trevélez has a protected geographical indication and is the only ham indication in Spain defined by altitude. Alongside the ham the village runs on cherry tomatoes and around nine hundred head of livestock.

Trevélez: Ham Cured in Thin Air

Take the waters at the balneario, which is why the town exists as it does

Walk between the public fountains in the town and taste the difference between the springs

Work out what the name means, and that it was describing the springs long before anyone bottled them

Come for the carrera del agua on the night of San Juan, when the town throws buckets of water over everybody in the street — while the rest of Spain spends that night round a fire

Use it as the gateway it is and go on up into the Alpujarra afterwards

Lanjarón is probably an Arabic rendering of a pre-Roman word meaning a place full of springs, and the name has turned out to be the whole story: the town sits on the western edge of the Alpujarra below the Sierra Nevada, its spa has drawn people for two centuries, and the one industry in the place bottles the water and sells it across Spain. It is the gateway to the Alpujarra proper, so it is also the sensible place to start anything going further up the valley.

Lanjarón: The Water Town of the Alpujarra

Drive the mountain road from the Pradollano ski resort into the Sierra Nevada National Park — the paved road climbs above 2800m on the approach to the observatory, offering an unobstructed southern horizon above the Mediterranean

Visit the Observatorio de Sierra Nevada at 2896m on a public open day — run by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía since 1962, with optical and infrared telescopes

Summit Mulhacén (3479m), the highest peak in mainland Spain, and photograph the coast of Africa on the southern horizon on a clear morning

A Class 1 IDA dark sky designation covers the summit area of Spain's highest mountain range — the Sierra Nevada Observatory at 2896m sits on the approach to Pico Veleta (3398m), the second highest peak in mainland Spain

The Sierra Nevada Observatory and Mulhacén

Ski or snowboard the Sierra Nevada Ski Station, Europe's southernmost ski resort, on 115km of pistes between Pradollano (2,100m) and 3,300m on the slopes of Veleta

Ski the runs that hosted the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in 1996

Drive the A-395 from Granada, 27km up to Pradollano; the season runs from late November to early May

Sierra Nevada is the southernmost ski resort in Europe, on the slopes of Veleta above Granada, running from 2,100 metres up to about 3,300 — high enough to hold snow into May at a latitude further south than Tunis. It hosted the Alpine World Ski Championships in 1996. The thing people do with it that they cannot do anywhere else is ski in the morning and be on a Mediterranean beach in the afternoon, because the coast is about seventy kilometres away.

Sierra Nevada: Skiing Europe's Southernmost Slopes

Climb to the Nasrid castle on the rock and look down at the cane plain and the sea

Work out that this was the last place in continental Europe growing sugar cane commercially

Find out what the Nasrid kings used this castle for besides defence

Walk the white lanes of the old town on the way up, which are stepped throughout

Go down to the Peñón on the beach, which is the rock the town is named after

Salobreña is a white town piled onto a rock above the Granada coast with a Nasrid castle on top, and what is unusual is the ground below it: a flat green plain of sugar cane running to the sea. Sugar was introduced here under Islamic rule and this was the last place in continental Europe still growing it commercially into the 21st century. The Nasrid kings used the castle as a residence and, on occasion, as a prison for members of their own family.

Salobreña: A Castle Over Sugar Cane

Walk through the Nasrid Palaces at your booked time, as far as the Court of the Lions

Climb the Torre de la Vela on the Alcazaba, built between 1238 and 1279, for the view over Granada and the Vega

Walk the gardens of the Generalife, the Nasrid kings' villa above the palaces

Go into the Palace of Charles V, begun in the 1520s inside the Nasrid walls

The Alhambra is the palace-city on its hill above Granada, built for the Nasrid emirs and their court and later lived in by the Kings of Castile; the decoration of the Nasrid Palaces is one of the high points of Andalusi art. It became Spain's first UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984, together with the Generalife, the Nasrid kings' country villa and gardens just above it, and in 2016 it had over 2.6 million visitors, second in Spain only to the Sagrada Família. When Granada surrendered in 1492, the Catholic Monarchs' men raised the cross and their banner on the Tower of Comares, and in the 1520s Charles V began a Renaissance palace inside the walls. On the Alcazaba, the Torre de la Vela, built between 1238 and 1279, had a bell rung at dawn to tell the farmers of the Vega when to water.

The Alhambra: The Nasrid Palaces, the Alcazaba and the Generalife

Spend a night in a cave house in Guadix's Barrio de Santiago, where about 2,000 cave houses hold around 3,000 residents and stay at a constant 18°C

Climb to the Alcazaba, the Moorish fortress above Guadix, which surrendered to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1489

Around two thousand cave houses in Guadix hold roughly three thousand people, and they are not a curiosity — they are ordinary homes, dug into soft clay hillsides, whitewashed, with chimneys sticking out of the ground above them and a constant internal temperature of about 18°C whatever the season. In a place that reaches 40°C in summer and freezes in winter, that is simply the best available engineering. Several are let as accommodation, so you can spend a night underground and find out.

Guadix: A Night in a Cave House

Walk the Parque Botánico El Majuelo in Almuñécar and see the excavated Roman fish-salting factory, on the site of the Phoenician settlement of Sexi founded around 800 BC

Climb to the Castillo de San Miguel above the town

Taste the subtropical fruit grown on the coast — cherimoyas, mangos, avocados and loquats — at an Almuñécar market or farm shop

See the Cueva de los Siete Palacios, the Roman structure later used as a cave dwelling

The coast between Almuñécar and Motril is backed by mountains that keep the north wind off it, which gives it a microclimate warm enough to grow cherimoya, mango, avocado and loquat commercially — subtropical fruit, in Europe. Almuñécar is much older than the farming: the Phoenicians founded Sexi here around 800 BC and the Romans ran an industrial fish-salting operation whose tanks have been excavated in the middle of the town, under a botanical garden.