Alicante

Lucentum. The Romans named it that – City of Light – and the name has stuck, even if most visitors never pause long enough to notice.

Alicante is Europe's sun-worshippers' gateway: three million tourists pass through each year, most heading straight for the coast. The city itself gets overlooked. Which is a shame, because the Alicante that exists between the beach and the airport is something else entirely.

Climb above the Explanada – that marble-tiled promenade where locals take their evening paseo to the sound of the sea – and you reach the Barrio de Santa Cruz. Ten steep streets of whitewashed houses, geranium-draped balconies, and residents who've barely acknowledged the twenty-first century. Above it all, the Castillo de Santa Bárbara watches from the rock, as it has since the Moors built it a thousand years ago.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours give you the Alicante that three million people miss – at your pace, in your ears, in the light that gave this city its name.