Village
Alicante (Alacant) is the capital of its province and of the comarca of L'Alacantí, dominated by Santa Bárbara Castle, a Mediterranean port city with 366,221 inhabitants (INE 2025), the second most populous municipality in the Valencian Community and the tenth in Spain. Together with San Vicente del Raspeig, San Juan de Alicante, Muchamiel and Campello it forms a conurbation of more than half a million inhabitants. Its name comes from the Greek Akra Leuké, “White Headland”, the origin of the later Latin name Lucentum, linked to the Tossal de Manises, which under the Arabs evolved into al-Laqant, the precedent of present-day Alacant. It has an important port and Alicante-Elche Airport. Its most notable festivities are the Bonfires of San Juan, from 19 to 24 June.
Monument
A fortress located in the centre of Alicante, on Mount Benacantil, a rocky outcrop 166 metres high beside the sea which, seen from the beach, resembles a face and gives the mountain its nickname, the Moor's face. Although there are Bronze Age, Iberian and Roman archaeological remains on its slopes, the fortress dates back to the late 9th century, in the midst of Muslim rule; the infante Alfonso, future Alfonso X, took it from the Arabs on 4 December 1248, the feast of Santa Bárbara, which gave it its name. Successive kings extended its defences, and between 1562 and 1580 most of the buildings that survive today were constructed. Declared a monumento histórico-artístico (former Spanish heritage designation, predecessor of the Bien de Interés Cultural) in 1961, it lay in ruins until 1963, when it was opened to the public. It is one of the city's main symbols.
Activity
The Bonfires of San Juan of Alicante have a distant origin, linked to the custom of farmers celebrating the longest day of the year with bonfires that drove away evil on the shortest night; they took their present form in 1928, when José María Py drove their institutionalisation in the style of the Fallas of Valencia, after decades in which the street festivities had been increasingly incorporating ninots, satirical figures made of wood, cardboard and cork. They are set up from 14 to 20 June and burn on the night of the 24th, after a firework display launched from Mount Benacantil; the events include the opening proclamation, the mascletà and the floral offering to the Virgen del Remedio. They are declared a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Internacional (Spain's top festival-tourism designation).
Nature
The island of Tabarca, also called Nueva Tabarca or Plana, lies about 22 kilometres from Alicante and 8 from the port of Santa Pola, off whose coast lies Spain's first marine reserve, declared in April 1986 and famous for the clarity of its waters. It is the largest island in the Valencian Community and the only inhabited one, administered as a district of Alicante, with the village of Tabarca, which in 2019 had just 51 inhabitants. With only 30 hectares and an almost flat relief not exceeding 15 metres, it narrows in its western third to form an isthmus separating the town centre from the rest of the island. It received its current name in 1770, when Genoese refugees arrived from the Tunisian island of Tabarka, although it had previously been known as San Pablo, Planesia or Plana.
Curiosity
The island of Tabarca, off the coast of Alicante, was declared Spain's first marine reserve in 1986. Its objectives had already been set on 14 April 1983, with the aim of preserving the area's marine fauna and flora and serving as a restocking base for the benefit of the ecological wealth of the surrounding waters. Since then, its waters have been a true refuge for both marine flora and fauna.
Monument
The Explanada de España, Alicante's most emblematic promenade, runs along the harbour between the Puerta del Mar and the Parque de Canalejas, under a canopy of palm trees. Its undulating paving, which evokes the movement of the waves, is made up of about 7.5 million tiles of mármol rojo Alicante, crema marfil and negro Marquina marble, from quarries in Novelda, Pinoso, Algueña and Monóvar; the design was inspired by the plaza del Rossio in Lisbon, following a visit by mayor Agatángelo Soler and architect Francisco Muñoz in the 1950s, the decade in which it was paved. Called in the 19th century Paseo de los Mártires de la Libertad, it was restored in 2009 when the mosaic turned fifty years old, and today hosts the Feria de Artesanía and the Auditorio de la Concha.
Monument
The San Nicolás de Bari co-cathedral stands on the plaza del Abad Penalva, in Alicante's old town. On 6 December 1244, the feast of San Nicolás, the city was handed over by the Muslims to the Infante Alfonso, the future Alfonso X the Wise, who ordered a church built in honour of the saint; the original building, then outside the walls, occupied the same plot as the current one. Enlarged in successive stages during the 14th and 16th centuries, it was completely demolished in the 17th century, by which time it had already been raised to collegiate status, and rebuilt between 1616 and 1662 in a sober Herrerian Renaissance style. Together with the catedral del Salvador of Orihuela, it is one of the two cathedral seats of the diocese of Orihuela-Alicante, and was declared a monumento histórico-artístico (a former Spanish heritage-protection category, later folded into Bien de Interés Cultural) in 1974.
Monument
The MARQ, Alicante's Archaeological Museum, occupies the former Hospital de San Juan de Dios, the work of architect Juan Vidal Ramos, built between 1926 and 1929, on the plaza Doctor Gómez Ulla. The museum was opened in 1932 and took its final shape in 2000; in 2004 the European Museum Forum awarded it the European Museum of the Year Award, a distinction received by only four Spanish museums. It brings together more than 81,000 pieces illustrating the history of the Costa Blanca, arranged in rooms devoted to prehistory, Iberian culture, Roman culture, the Middle Ages and modern and contemporary cultures, besides an area for temporary exhibitions. It stands out for its modern aesthetic and its extensive use of audiovisual and computer media, which established it as the leading archaeological museum of the 21st century.
Monument
The Museu de Fogueres de Alicante, devoted to the Fogueres de Sant Joan, brings together pardoned ninots, traditional costumes and screenings about the festival. It is located at number 29 of the Rambla de Méndez Núñez, the central avenue that separates the Centro and Casco Antiguo neighbourhoods and along which, during the festivities, much of the events take place.
Nature
An urban beach in Alicante, situated at the foot of the Castillo de Santa Bárbara, right in the city centre, 667 metres long and 40 metres wide, a strip of golden sand with calm waters. Until the early 20th century it was a pebble beach where fishermen from the barrio del Raval Roig beached their boats; it was turned into a sandy beach during the era of the tren botijo (1893-1917), when it earned the nickname playa de Madrid because of the many holidaymakers arriving from the capital. It has a seafront promenade, signposted access, lifeguard and police service, and has regained the Blue Flag following the renovation works in the city centre.
Nature
An urban park created in 1994 on the slope of Mount Benacantil, between the old town and Santa Bárbara castle, with paths, fountains and viewpoints over the city and the port.
Monument
The Castillo de San Fernando, built in the early 19th century on Alicante's Tossal hill, takes its name in honour of Ferdinand VII. It was built in 1813, during the Peninsular War, to a design by the military engineer Pablo Ordovás y Sastre, commander of engineers of the garrison, with the purpose of serving as a prison and reinforcing the defence of the castle of Santa Bárbara. It never actually came into service, since Alicante did not suffer French occupation. In 1939 Francoist troops used it as a concentration camp for Republican prisoners. With an irregular layout adapted to the topography of the hill, it preserves a polygonal bastion on the north front and another rounded one, popularly known as the yogur, at the south-western end, joined by curtain walls with a broken layout.
Monument
A monastery of Augustinian canonesses regular which has guarded since the 15th century the cloth known as the Santa Faz, one of the three original fragments of the veil with which Veronica wiped the face of Christ.
Activity
A pilgrimage almost five centuries old covering eight kilometres between the Co-Cathedral of San Nicolás and the Monastery of the Santa Faz, held on the second Thursday after Easter.
Nature
Urban forest park of more than 80 hectares at the northern entrance to Alicante, also known as the sierra de Sant Julià or, among sailors, as Malhivern. With 174 metres at its highest point, it forms, together with the Benacantil and the Tossal, one of the geographical landmarks that have shaped the city's urban development. The sierra has two hills: the smaller one, the Molinet, preserved until 1823 a hermitage dedicated to Santa Ana, of which remains still survive. Prehistoric remains from the Bronze Age have been found there, evidence of age-old mining exploitation; in the 19th century La Británica Metalúrgica was set up there to extract aggregates, and the trenet railway line and the quarry road were built. Today it is a forest park with views from its summit as far as the Albufereta and the island of Tabarca.
Nature
A stretch of coast between the Albufereta and San Juan beaches with a flora micro-reserve at Cala Cantalares, seagrass meadows and a fossil marine terrace some 100,000 years old.
Activity
The Mercado Central of Alicante, on the avenida de Alfonso el Sabio, is an eclectic building with modernista ornamentation whose first design, by the architect Enrique Sánchez Sedeño, dates from 1911, the year King Alfonso XIII laid the first stone; the works, directed by Juan Vidal on a later design by Próspero Lafarga and Francisco Fajardo, took place between 1917 and 1921; the market was inaugurated in 1922. On 25 May 1938, during the civil war, it was bombed by Italian fascist aircraft flying from Mallorca, leaving more than three hundred dead. Rectangular in plan with a rotunda at the south-western corner, it is arranged in three naves on steel pillars and trusses, with roofs allowing overhead lighting; it was renovated in 1986 by the architect Alfonso Navarro Guzmán.
Historical milestone
Above the bay are preserved the ruins of Lucentum: walls, baths, forum and dwellings of a Roman city raised over an earlier settlement of the Carthaginian period. It was left depopulated around the third century and its name ended up giving rise to that of Alicante.
Historical milestone
Fernando the Catholic granted Alicante the title of city in 1490, recognising its role as the maritime outlet of Castile and of the Valencian interior. The privilege reinforced its municipal council and consolidated the port as the main commercial point of the south of the kingdom.
Historical milestone
During the War of Succession the castle, in Anglo-Dutch hands, was undermined by a French mine that exploded on 3 March 1709 and killed the governor John Richards and part of the garrison. The stronghold capitulated a few weeks later.
Historical milestone
The Italian air force bombed on 25 May 1938 the city center at the busiest hour in the market and the surrounding streets. Around three hundred people died and it was one of the deadliest attacks on a civilian population of the whole war.
Historical milestone
On 28 March 1939 the British collier Stanbrook sailed from the port with close to three thousand Republican refugees bound for Oran. It was the last ship that managed to leave; thousands of people were left on the quay waiting for an evacuation that never came.
Food and drink
The wines of the province are covered by the DOP Alicante, with monastrell as the dominant variety and moscatel de la Marina for the sweet ones. From the seventeenth century the port exported to northern Europe the so-called Alicante wine, dense and of much colour.