Toledo, Spain

Toledo was the seat of a taifa kingdom and, before that, one of the principal cities of al-Andalus — a position that made it wealthy, contested and unusually plural. Muslims, Christians and Jews lived and worked here together for centuries, which is why the city is still called the City of Three Cultures, and why its buildings borrow from one another so freely: a synagogue built by Muslim craftsmen in the Almohad manner, a cathedral raised on the foundations of the main mosque, Mudéjar brick towers above Gothic naves. The mosque of Bab al-Mardum, built in 999 by Musa ibn Ali, is the one building that survives essentially unchanged — nine small vaults carried on four columns, each vault worked to a different pattern, with the founder's inscription still legible in Kufic brickwork across the façade. Beyond the monuments, Toledo rewards walking: the lanes are narrow and steep, the Tagus gorge falls away on three sides, and the view from the Mirador del Valle at sunset takes in the whole city at once. It is a compact place, and it is better given a night and a day than rushed as a half-day stop out of Madrid.