The Old Quarter, commonly known as ¿El Barrio¿, is the part of Alicante with the most history, where most of the city¿s monuments are located. For its part, in Santa Cruz, the highest part of the old quarter, you can discover a very different city, a neighbourhood of pedestrian streets and white houses decorated with geraniums, from which to enjoy pleasant views.

In streets like Toledo, San Luis and Diputado Auset Street we can discover the hidden, unusual Alicante, with neat houses with colourful facades scattered with flowers, iron railings and ceramic mosaics, where you can discover the affection felt by its residents for the Santa Faz and also some old fountains. Steep, narrow streets, of Arab influences, which are practically silent and lead down to the Chapel of Santa Cruz, which dates back to the 18th century.

Alicante was a walled city until the 19th century. In 1858, Queen Isabel II came to Alicante to inaugurate the train that departed from Madrid. Given that the outer walls had brought the city¿s growth to a standstill, the Queen¿s visit was used to request permission to knock them down. That is how the city began to grow. Along this route you will visit the area in which the new city was built in the second half of the 19th century.

You have to walk along La Explanada to reach the Plaza del Mar. This esplanade was one of the first to be built at the end of the 19th century. After the walls were knocked down, the rubble was used to fill in the terrain and create this esplanade. The current esplanade was built in the 1960¿s and has a total of 6,600,000 tesseras. We can see three colours, one of which is the so-called Alicante red, the colour of the marble that is only quarried in Alicante, which is where it gets its name.

Alicante cuisine is typically Mediterranean. Rice, the basic ingredient in all Valencian cuisine, is the protagonist of a wide variety of recipes; although it is true to say that many other ingredients are used to prepare the typical dishes. We can highlight arroz a banda, arroz a la alicantina, caldero (a typical dish from the island of Tabarca), arroz caldoso and the popular olleta.

Terra Mítica, in Benidorm, is the only real theme park in Europe. Incredible attractions and shows make this space a fascinating place in which time does not exist. You can experience the intense mysteries of the most ancient and legendary civilisations of the Mediterranean by visiting the five areas that make up the park: Egypt, Greece, Rome, Iberia and The Islands. The theme park is designed for everyone, the daring and the curious, where age or origin is not important, only the desire to enjoy oneself.