Ciudad Rodrigo, Spain

The unspoiled frontier town of CIUDAD RODRIGO – 90km southwest of Salamanca, astride the road to Portugal – is worth a detour even if you don't plan to cross the border. It's an endearingly sleepy place, which, despite an orgy of destruction during the Peninsular War, preserves streets full of Renaissance mansions.

The best way to get an overview of town is by making the thirty-minute circuit of the encircling walls and ramparts – originally twelfth century, with seventeenth-century additions. Inside the walls, all roads lead sooner or later to the elongated Plaza Mayor, while to the northwest is the Catedral (daily 9am–1pm & 4–6pm; € 1.50, free Wed), with its unusual eight-part vaults, dome-like in shape, and a coro with wonderfully grotesque stalls carved by Rodrigo Alemán, who also created those at Toledo and Plasencia.

Ciudad Rodrigo was a crucial border point in the Peninsular War, guarding the route between Spain and Portugal. The town fell to the French in 1810, despite valiant resistance from General Herrasti's Spanish garrison – a four-cornered monument to the general and his men stands in the little square beside the cathedral. In front of the walls near here is another memorial, to Julián Sánchez, "El Charro", who led the local guerillas against the French, and beyond this, up on the wall itself, is a tiny plaque marking the site of the Great Breach through which the British retook Ciudad Rodrigo with a devastatingly rapid siege in 1812. A triumphant rampage of looting followed. When order was restored, the troops paraded out in a ragbag of stolen French finery. A bemused Wellington muttered to his staff, "Who the devil are those fellows?" The British guns were on two ridges opposite town – you can still see the cannonball dents above the doorway on this side of the cathedral.

There's a daily market outside the walls, and a Tuesday market within, in the arcaded Plaza del Buen Alcalde. The Carnaval del Toro (Feb), with bull running in the streets and fights in the Plaza Mayor, is among the most dramatic in Spain, while Semana Santa (Easter) sees processions of hooded penitents.