Xàtiva

Two popes were born in Xàtiva - both of them Borgias - and the town has never let anyone forget it. Forty minutes south of Valencia, it keeps one of the finest old quarters in the region: Gothic palaces, tiled fountains, and a collegiate church built to cathedral scale.

Above it all runs the castle: a double fortress stretched along the whole ridge, the longest in the old Kingdom of Valencia, with Iberian and Roman stonework in its foundations and a cell that held a rival to the crown of Aragon. The views reach half the province.

And in the museum hangs the famous upside-down portrait of Philip V - the king who burned the town in 1707. Xàtiva still hangs him head-down. I'll tell you why.