Take the waters at the baths, which have run since the Romans

Find the 12th-century Arab bath house still standing over the spring

Work out what the fall of Alhama in 1482 did to Granada strategically

Find the ballad with the refrain Ay de mi Alhama and work out why it was written

Walk the gorge below the town along the Alhama river

Alhama means the baths, and the hot springs here have been used since the Romans, with a 12th-century Arab bath house still standing over the water. When Castile took the town in 1482 it cut the road between Granada and Málaga and effectively began the end of the Nasrid kingdom — the ballad that came out of it, with the refrain Ay de mi Alhama, is one of the best-known in Spanish. The town stands on the edge of a gorge cut by the Alhama river, with a walkway along it.

Alhama de Granada: Ay de mi Alhama

Walk the Barribarto, the Morisco quarter, and find the ceramic panels telling the 1569 rebellion

Work out what happened on the Peñón above the village at the end of that rebellion

Find the sugar cane factory in the village, one of the last that worked in Europe

Taste the Axarquía muscatel, made from grapes dried on the slope before pressing

Walk up into the Sierras de Tejeda, Almijara y Alhama behind the village

Frigiliana sits above the coast at the western end of the Axarquía, a whitewashed Morisco quarter of stepped lanes built at angles that make sense only on foot, with ceramic panels set into the walls telling the story of the 1569 Morisco rebellion that ended on the crag above the village. Behind it rise the Sierras de Tejeda, Almijara y Alhama. The Axarquía is the hot inland corner of Málaga province that grows muscatel grapes on impossible slopes and dries them on the ground into raisins, and makes a sweet wine from the rest.

Frigiliana and the Axarquía

Go through the tourist galleries — over nine thousand square metres of them — and find the largest columns

Find out what happened on 12 January 1959 and who found the cave

Work out the argument about the seal paintings: 42,000 years and Neanderthal, or 18,000 to 20,000 and Homo sapiens

Work out why the dating matters so much to the question of whether Neanderthals made art

Find out what is behind the tourist route — the high galleries and new galleries, which are not open

Five boys out catching bats found the cave at Maro on 12 January 1959. What they had walked into is over nine thousand square metres of show galleries alone, with chambers big enough to hold concerts and speleothems on a scale unusual anywhere. It also holds rock paintings, and this is where the argument is: organic material associated with a group of seal paintings was dated in 2012 to 42,000 years, which would have made them the oldest art in human history and Neanderthal work — and then a 2017 study brought the age down to between 20,000 and 18,000 years, putting them in the Magdalenian and making them Homo sapiens.

The Cave of Nerja

Get to the Mirador de las Peñas and work out what National Geographic was looking at in 2015

Go into the Iglesia de la Encarnación, a round neoclassical church built on the model of the Pantheon

Climb to the Nasrid castle on the rock and find the church the Catholic Monarchs put inside it

Work out what the name means and whether the village lives up to it in January

Eat the local cheese and the morcilla, which is what the inland Granada kitchen runs on

In October 2015 National Geographic put Montefrío on a list of the ten best village views in the world, and the reason is a single composition: a round neoclassical church in the middle of the town, modelled on the Pantheon, with a Nasrid castle on a bare rock directly above it, and white houses filling everything between. The Catholic Monarchs built a church inside the castle after taking it, as they generally did. The name means exactly what it looks like — cold mountain.

Montefrío: Ten Best Views in the World

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.

Almuñécar: Roman Fish Tanks and Subtropical Fruit

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

Go through the eleven original cave dwellings kept at the Centro de Interpretación

See a zambra danced and work out how it differs from the flamenco performed everywhere else

Find out where the zambra came from — Morisco wedding ritual, not Andalusian cante

Walk up the Camino del Sacromonte for the view straight across the Darro at the Alhambra

Read Lorca's Romancero Gitano and work out which parts of it are this hillside

Sacromonte is on the eastern edge of Granada in the Valparaíso valley, directly across the Darro from the Alhambra — the traditional quarter of Granada's Roma, who lived in caves dug into the hillside. Lorca wrote them into the Romancero Gitano. The zambra danced here is its own form, distinct from the rest of flamenco, and descends from Morisco wedding ceremonies rather than from the Andalusian cante. The Centro de Interpretación del Sacromonte keeps eleven of the caves in their original state and opens them to the public.

Sacromonte: The Cave Quarter Facing the Alhambra

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

Go to the archaeological museum and the necropolis and work out what was found here on 21 July 1971

Work out what the cavity in her side contained and what that makes the sculpture

Find out where the original is now and how long Baza has been asking for her back

Come in September for the Cascamorras and find out what happens to the man who runs it

Find the Arab baths in the old Jewish quarter, which are among the best preserved in Spain

On 21 July 1971 the archaeologist Francisco José Presedo Velo found a 4th-century BC Iberian sculpture in the Cerro del Santuario necropolis of ancient Basti — a seated woman in polychromed limestone, carved by the Bastetani, with a cavity in the side that held cremated remains. The Lady of Baza is one of the defining objects of Iberian art, alongside the Lady of Elche. The original is in Madrid and the argument about returning her to Baza has been running for decades. The town also holds the Cascamorras, in which a man tries to seize an image and is covered in oil for trying.