A Moorish citadel looming 166 metres above Costa Blanca's most effervescent port — where Santa Bárbara Castle, Postiguet Beach, and the Esplanade converge at Spain's sunniest latitude
Alicante is a sun-drenched port city on Spain's Costa Blanca (330,000 residents) where a Moorish citadel crowns Monte Benacantil above the palm-lined Esplanade and Postiguet Beach. Santa Bárbara Castle dominates the skyline from 166 metres, while the El Barrio historic quarter below packs whitewashed lanes, tapas bars, and a daily fresh fish market. The MARQ (Museo Arqueológico Provincial) houses one of Spain's finest Neolithic and Iberian collections, and the Tabarca island ferry departs the port for the only inhabited island in the Valencian Community.
Alicante (Roman Lucentum) was a Carthaginian trading post before becoming a prosperous Roman harbor town, with ruins still visible at the Tossal de Manises archaeological site near the airport. Moorish Laqant (8th–13th centuries) gave the city its Arabic name and built the original citadel that became Santa Bárbara Castle; King Alfonso X of Castile captured it in 1249 and incorporated it into the Crown of Castile. The city served as the Republican government's final refuge during the Spanish Civil War — the last Republican forces surrendered here in April 1939, and a monument on the port comm…