The last redoubt of Moorish culture in Spain, Granada is fabled for its exquisite palace-fortress, the Alhambra, one of the earth's architectural wonders and the biggest surviving medieval Islamic palace in the world.

The Alhambra well symbolises Granada's story and significance, having been brought to its peak of elegance and splendour in the 14th and 15th centuries when Granada was the flourishing capital of the last Moorish kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula.

Finally, in 1492, the Christian Reconquest reached here too, led by Spain's ‘Catholic Monarchs', Isabel and Fernando, and bringing with it the churches, monasteries and other monuments that also contribute to the city's beauty and atmosphere today.

From their medieval heyday Granada and the Alhambra slipped into centuries of decline, which only started to be reversed by the interest taken in them by 19th-century Romantics such as American writer Washington Irving, author of the celebrated Tales of the Alhambra. The Romantics' interest sparked early tourism here.

Today tourism has grown to the extent that it is a major bulwark of Granada's economy. But the city is also very much a cultural capital in its own right, with a prestigious university, a large student population (including many foreign students studying Spanish) and a buzzing entertainment and nightlife scene.

This blending of contrasts (ancient with young, traditional with creative, Christian with Islamic, narrow, dark, secretive streets with expansive, open vistas) weaves a unique magic that makes Granada quite unlike any other city in Spain, or indeed on the planet.