Tarragona

About Tarragona

Tarragona is the Barcelona alternative almost nobody books ahead and almost everybody is grateful for. An hour by train from the capital, it holds the most complete Roman ensemble on the peninsula: ancient Tárraco, capital of Hispania Citerior, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its amphitheatre looks straight onto the Mediterranean —a view no other Roman site can match— and within a few hundred metres sit the circus, the provincial forum and nearly a kilometre of walls you can walk along the Passeig Arqueològic. Yet Tarragona is no open-air museum: the Part Alta is a living medieval quarter, its Gothic cathedral crowning a stone staircase, its squares lined with bars where vermouth is still a ritual. Down at the harbour, the fishermen's district of El Serrallo serves the region's best romesco de peix and fish auctioned at the afternoon lonja. In September, the Santa Tecla festival fills the streets with castells, the human towers that are Intangible Heritage and that, in even years, peak at the Concurs de Castells, the largest in the world. For the international traveller, Tarragona delivers in two or three days what Rome charges dearly and with queues: imperial history within reach, urban beaches like Arrabassada, and Catalan food without Barcelona's prices or crowds. Arrive by train, sleep in the Part Alta, and rise early: the amphitheatre at dawn, empty with the sea behind it, is worth the trip.