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Few cities in Spain wear their Roman past as openly as Tarragona. Perched on a rocky promontory above the Costa Daurada, this Catalan port city was once Tarraco, the capital of the Roman province of Hispania Citerior and one of the most important cities in the entire western empire. That inheritance is not confined to museums or textbooks; it is embedded in the fabric of the streets, in the amphitheatre that looks directly out to sea, in the circus where chariots once raced beneath what is now the medieval old town, and in the remarkably preserved city walls that predate the Roman occupation itself, built from enormous Cyclopean stone blocks by Iberian hands long before the legions arrived.

The UNESCO World Heritage designation awarded to the Archaeological Ensemble of Tarraco in 2000 recognised what residents have always known: that walking through the Part Alta, the elevated historic quarter, is an exercise in layered time. Roman stonework sits beneath medieval masonry, which in turn supports Baroque facades and the occasional modernista flourish. The Cathedral of Tarragona, begun in the twelfth century on the site of a Roman temple and completed over several hundred years, is the architectural and spiritual centre of the old town. Its cloister, with Romanesque arches giving way to Gothic detail, is one of the finest in Catalonia, and the cathedral's audio guide allows visitors to move through the building at their own pace, picking apart the centuries of construction that make it so difficult to assign to any single style or era.