Overview to Cadiz: Travel Guide and Tourist Information
Jutting out into the sea, Cadiz is tucked away at the very southernmost tip of the Iberian peninsular. Staring across the immensity of the Atlantic, it feels like what is was until the Age of Discovery – the very edge of the known world.
Cadiz is also one of the longest continually inhabited cities in Europe: its roots stretch all the way back to 1100 BC when the town was founded by the Phoenicians, and it counts the Romans and the Moors among its past inhabitants.
Modern-day Cadiz is an attractive, scruffy little port town. The Old Town, contained within broad walls, holds an excellent archaeological museum (on Plaza de Mina) and, rising above the city, a wonderfully over-the-top cathedral full of ornate baroque twiddles and delicate decorations.
Flamboyantly colorful houses line the city’s seafront and a relatively pleasant sandy beach. All along the Costa de la Luz, the beaches are cleaner, sandier and, with their strong Atlantic winds, a prime destination for windsurfers and kite-surfers.
In terms of eating out, the bars around Calle Sagasta, Plaza San Juan de Dios and Plaza de la Libertad are generally heaving. Along with the ‘chiringuitos’ that line the beach in summer, they offer some of the best (and cheapest) seafood and fried fish in the whole of Spain.
Historically, Cadiz had anarchic political leanings and a reputation for trouble-making. And today’s city lives up to this past: few who’ve witnessed the full mayhem of its ‘Carnaval’ – a vivid splash of color, music and full-scale partying in February – will ever forget it.
But nightlife in the city certainly isn’t limited to carnival week. The bars and small, seedy clubs around Plaza de España and Plaza de Miña are lively, down-to-earth and inevitably leave you stumbling through the narrow streets of the Old Town in the half-light of dawn!
Cadiz is a friendly, unpretentious place that, bathed in a stunning seaside light, has more than just a hint of elemental beauty. It may not be the most sophisticated of cities, but it embodies much of what’s so thoroughly appealing about Andalucia.