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San Sebastian sits at the mouth of the Urumea River, curled around a near-perfect horseshoe bay where the beach of La Concha stretches between two hills. The British and Portuguese troops who burned most of the city in 1813 during the Peninsular War left only one street standing, which is why the old town you walk through today is neoclassical rather than medieval, its grid of streets rebuilt with a deliberate elegance in the decades that followed. The sculpted iron plaques of Eduardo Chillida's Comb of the Wind, bolted into rocks at the western end of the bay, are one of the most precisely placed works of public art anywhere in Spain.

The food here is the main event and has been for a long time.

San Sebastian has more Michelin stars per capita than almost anywhere on earth, but the more democratic glory is the pintxo bars of the Parte Vieja, the old quarter, where every counter is stacked with small plates of improbable invention. Arzak on the edge of Gros earned its third star in 1989 and has held it since; Mugaritz in nearby Errenteria regularly tops the World's 50 Best list. The txokos, the private gastronomic societies where Basque men (and now women) gather to cook together without professional obligation, have been operating since the 1870s.