Spain Guide
Andalucía
Almería
ALMERÍA is a pleasant, modern city, spread at the foot of a stark grey mountain. At the summit is a tremendous Alcazaba (Tues– Sun 9am–8.30pm, Nov– March until 6.30pm; €1.50, free with EU passport), probably the best surviving example of Moorish military fortification, with three huge walled enclosures, in the second of which are the remains of a mosque, converted to a chapel by the Reyes Católicos.
In the eleventh century, when Almería was an independent kingdom and the wealthiest, most commercially active city of Spain, this citadel contained immense gardens and palaces and some 20,000 people. Its grandeur was reputed to rival the court of Granada, but comparisons are impossible since little beyond the walls and towers remains, the last remnants of its stuccowork having been sold off by the locals in the eighteenth century.
From the Alcazaba, however, you do get a good view of the coast, of Almería's cave quarter – the Barrio de la Chanca on a low hill to the left – and of the city's strange, fortified Catedral (Mon– Fri 10am–2pm & 4–5.30pm, Sat 10am–1pm; €2), built in the sixteenth century at a time when the southern Mediterranean was terrorized by the raids of Barbarossa and other Turkish and North African pirate forces; its corner towers once held cannons. Almería's splendid Museo Arqueológico (Tues 2.30–8.30pm, Wed– Sat 9am–8.30pm, Sun 9am–2.30pm; €1.50, free with EU passport), Ctra. de Ronda 13, off the east side of Avenida Federico García Lorca, has an impressive collection of important artefacts from the prehistoric site of Los Millares, as well as interesting Roman and Moorish collections, including fine Moorish ceramics.
There's little else to do in town, and your time is probably best devoted to sampling the cafés, tapas bars and terrazas in the streets circling the Puerta de Purchena, the focal junction of the modern town, strolling along the main Paseo de Almería down towards the harbour and taking day-trips out to the beaches along the coast. The city's own beach, southeast of the centre beyond the train lines, is long but dismal.