Almeria Audio Tours

Almeria occupies a particular corner of Spain where the landscape turns genuinely arid and the light takes on a quality that attracted Sergio Leone and other filmmakers who shot dozens of Westerns in the Tabernas Desert just forty kilometers to the north. The city itself is anchored by the Alcazaba, one of the largest and best-preserved Moorish fortresses in Spain, built in the 10th century by Abd-al-Rahman III when the port was among the wealthiest in the western Mediterranean.

Below the Alcazaba, the old medina quarter opens onto the Cathedral of the Incarnation, an unusual building started in 1524 with defensive battlements on its exterior walls, built that way because Berber pirates raided the coast regularly.

The harbor remains active today, and Almeria's covered market, the Mercado Central, offers anchovies from the Mediterranean, oranges from the Andarax valley, and jamón from nearby Trevélez. The city also sits at the edge of the Campo de Dalias, a vast sea of plastic greenhouses that produces much of Europe's winter vegetables.