Go down into the Gruta de las Maravillas, opened in 1914 and the first show cave in Spain

Walk through the lake chambers and work out how much of the route is underwater

Go up to Jabugo and find out what the different grades of Iberian ham actually mean

Walk in the dehesa between the villages of the sierra — this is the same oak system that feeds the pigs

Climb to the castle on the hill above the cave for the view across the sierra

The Gruta de las Maravillas runs under the castle hill of Aracena. It opened to the public in 1914, the first cave in Spain to do so, though the first historical reference to it dates from 1886 and local tradition credits a shepherd with finding it. The route runs through a chain of lakes. Above it is the Sierra de Aracena, cork and holm oak dehesa, and the reason to come as much as the cave: this is where Jabugo ham is made. The pigs range under the oaks in autumn and the hams are cured in the cold mountain air, which is why a sierra at this altitude in southern Spain ended up with the trade.

Aracena: A Cave Under the Castle and the Hams Above It

Walk into the prayer hall and find the mihrab, a deep brick and stone niche stripped of its facing

Look at what it was built from: Roman altars and capitals of the 1st and 2nd centuries, Visigothic fragments of the 5th and 6th

Find the square minaret standing outside the building to the north

Find the bullring built directly against the outside of the mosque wall

Work out how little light the prayer hall ever had — a courtyard, a door and three narrow slits

On the hill above Almonaster la Real, in the Sierra de Aracena, stands an Andalusi mosque on a trapezoidal plan dictated by the slope, standing with an old Muslim fortress and a bullring built against it. It was put up out of whatever was to hand: Roman funerary altars, columns and capitals of the 1st and 2nd centuries, and Visigothic fragments of the 5th and 6th, including an epitaph slab, an iconostasis screen, an impost and a lintel. The mihrab is a deep brick and stone niche that has lost its facing, there is a square minaret outside to the north, and the prayer hall was lit only by the courtyard, the door and three narrow slits.

Almonaster la Real: A Mosque Inside a Church

Stand at the water and look at a river with a pH of under 3 that is full of life

Work out what lives in it — acidophile organisms that eat minerals, some of them endemic to this river

Find out why NASA studies this valley and what it has to do with Mars

Look into Corta Atalaya, at one time the largest open-cast mine in Europe

Ride the restored Riotinto mining railway, built by the Rio Tinto Company Limited to get ore to Huelva

Find the English quarter the British company built for its managers and engineers from 1873 onwards

The Tinto runs deep red with a pH between 1.7 and 2.7 and a heavy load of iron, copper, cadmium and manganese — the product of weathering pyrite and chalcopyrite in the ore bodies along it. Nothing should live in that, and yet it is full of acidophile micro-organisms, prokaryote and eukaryote both, including fungi and algae endemic to the river, which feed on minerals alone. NASA picked it as a habitat to study for its possible resemblance to conditions on Mars. Above it sits Corta Atalaya, once the largest open-cast mine in Europe.

Río Tinto: The River NASA Studies to Understand Mars

Walk into a dehesa and work out that the spacing of the trees is a decision, not an accident

Come in autumn during the montanera and watch the pigs turned out under the oaks to fatten on acorns

Work out the whole chain from the ground up: oak, acorn, pig, ham, price

Find out why it is called a dehesa — from defesa, a defence, because these woods were fenced to protect livestock

Look for the birds the system supports: this is black vulture, imperial eagle and crane country precisely because of the oaks

The dehesa looks like parkland and is in fact a farming system: holm oak and cork oak spaced deliberately far apart so that enough light reaches the grass beneath, balancing pasture, water in the soil and acorn yield. It is agro-silvo-pastoral, it covers the western side of the Iberian peninsula, and the word comes from the Latin defesa, defence, because the first settlers after the reconquest fenced these woods to protect their flocks. The oaks are pruned to produce acorns, and in autumn the Iberian pigs are turned out to eat them. That season is the montanera, and it is what makes the ham.

The Dehesa: The Landscape That Makes the Ham

Find the Torre Sangrienta and the story the town tells about what happened to the Templars in 1312

Work out the sequence: taken in 1230 with Templar help, given to the Order, seized by the Crown eighty years later

Climb one of the Baroque church towers, which the town has in a quantity out of all proportion to its size

Find out who Vasco Núñez de Balboa was and where in this town he was born

Eat jamón ibérico de bellota here, where the pigs are actually raised, rather than buying it elsewhere

Alfonso IX of León took this town in 1230 with Templar help and gave it to the Order, which repopulated the region and made it a Templar commandery. When Clement V dissolved the Order in 1312 the possessions passed to the Crown — and the town's own story is that the knights here refused to go, and were killed to a man, which is why one of the wall's bastions is called the Bloody Tower. The surrounding dehesa is some of the best acorn country in Spain, and the town is a centre of the Iberian ham trade.

Jerez de los Caballeros: Templars, Acorns and Balboa

Walk the wall circuit — about two kilometres of rammed earth and brick with fifty towers

Find the five gates and work out which is Roman and which Muslim work

Work out what the taifa of Niebla was: independent from 1234, reaching to Cape St Vincent, and still holding out after Córdoba and Seville had gone

Cross the old bridge over the Tinto and look at the colour of the water coming down from the mines

Go into the church of Santa María de la Granada, which was a mosque and before that a Visigothic church

Niebla has about two kilometres of almost complete wall in rammed earth and brick, with fifty towers and five gates, wrapped round a small town above the Tinto — the same red river that comes down from the mines. It was capital of a cora under the caliphate and then of the taifa of Niebla, which in 1234 recovered its independence under Abenmahfot and ran from the mouth of the Guadalquivir to Cape St Vincent, taking in much of what is now the Algarve — and held out against Castile for decades after Córdoba and Seville had fallen. Alfonso X finally took it in 1262 after a nine-month siege.

Niebla: Roman, Muslim and Still Walled

Go into the Alcázar of 1437, now a parador, and find where the fortress becomes a Habsburg palace

Walk the Plaza Grande and the Plaza Chica, the two connected arcaded squares that give the town its nickname

Work out what the lordship of Feria was and how its counts became dukes and grandees in 1567

Come for the International Livestock Fair at the turn of September and October

Go into the collegiate church of La Candelaria and find the Zurbaráns

Lorenzo II Suárez de Figueroa made Zafra the centre of the lordship of Feria, and in 1437 built the Alcázar as his residence; in the 16th and 17th centuries it was converted into a palace to suit Habsburg taste and a new collegiate church was finished. The fifth count of Feria was made a duke and grandee of Spain in 1567 for his services to Philip II's statecraft. The town is called Sevilla la Chica for its two connected arcaded squares, and its International Livestock Fair at the turn of September and October still draws tens of thousands.

Zafra: Sevilla la Chica

Stand in the Plaza Vázquez de Molina and work out that this is a Spanish hill town built as an Italian one

Go into the Sacra Capilla del Salvador, ordered in 1536 as Cobos's own funerary chapel — designed by Diego de Siloé on neo-Pythagorean proportions and built by Vandelvira from 1540

Find the Hospital de Santiago, begun in 1562 and sometimes called the Andalusian Escorial

Work out who paid for it: the emperor's secretary, spending court money on his home town

Francisco de los Cobos was secretary to Charles V, and he brought Italian taste home to a hill town in Jaén. Working through the architect Andrés de Vandelvira and his followers, Úbeda filled up with palaces and chapels as though it were a small Italian court, and neighbouring Baeza did much the same. Diego de los Cobos drew up the founding statutes of the Hospital de Santiago in 1562 and building started. The two towns were listed together by UNESCO on 3 July 2003 for the quality and preservation of their Renaissance architecture.