Cadiz: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Cádiz claims to be the oldest city in Western Europe: the Phoenicians of Tyre founded it as Gadir around three thousand years ago on an island almost cut off by the ocean, and you can still walk their streets under a modern building. The town has been rebuilt on the same rock ever since, layer on layer. Two hours, flat, and almost every street ends in the sea.
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A short history of Cadiz
According to tradition, the Phoenicians founded Gadir around 1100 BC, which is why it is considered one of the oldest cities in Western Europe. It stands on a narrow spit of land in the sea. In 1493 Christopher Columbus set out from here on his second voyage to America, and in the 18th century the monopoly on trade with the colonies moved here. In 1587 Francis Drake attacked the harbour and burned ships of the Spanish fleet. In 1812, when most of Spain was in Napoleon's hands, the parliament met here and drew up Spain's first liberal constitution.
The ten best sights in Cadiz
1Cádiz CathedralThe golden dome over the sea wall; the composer Falla is in the crypt
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2Torre Tavira
A merchants’ watchtower with a camera obscura that shows the live town
3Oratorio de San Felipe NeriThe church where Spain’s first constitution was voted in 1812
4Arco del PópuloThe gate of the medieval quarter, the oldest part of the town
5Roman TheatreOne of the largest in Hispania, found under burnt warehouses in 1980
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6Plaza Candelaria
A leafy square of the old town, with the house of a president
7La CaletaThe town beach between two castles, with fishing boats on the sand
8Castillo de San SebastiánA fortress on an islet, reached by a causeway into the ocean
9Castillo de Santa CatalinaA star-shaped fort on the beach, free, with exhibitions inside
10Parque GenovésA garden of clipped trees along the ocean wall
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Cadiz →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Cadiz:
Free walking tours in Cadiz
Three thousand years on a sandbar
Cádiz claims to be the oldest city in Western Europe: the Phoenicians of Tyre founded it as Gadir around three thousand years ago on an island almost cut off by the ocean, and you can still walk their streets under a modern building. The town has been rebuilt on the same rock ever since, layer on layer. Two hours, flat, and almost every street ends in the sea.
- Gadir · When a puppet theatre was being built here, the diggers came down onto Phoenician streets of the ninth century BC, with houses, a fish-salting works and the skeletons of two people. They have been left in place under glass floors. The Phoenicians came for the silver of the hinterland, and some scholars link this coast with the Tarshish of the Bible, the far-off port Jonah set out for.
- Arco del Pópulo · The gate of the medieval walled town, which for centuries was all of Cádiz. In 1596 an English fleet under the Earl of Essex sacked and burned the town, and almost nothing older than that survives above ground — except this quarter and its gates.
- Roman Theatre · Built in the first century BC by a citizen of Gades named Balbus, the first foreigner to become a Roman consul. It was one of the largest theatres in Roman Spain, and it was lost under the houses of the quarter until a fire in 1980 burned down some warehouses and revealed its seats.
- Cádiz Cathedral · Begun in 1722, when Cádiz had just won the monopoly of trade with the Americas, and it took more than a century to finish, so it is baroque below and neoclassical above. The dome is covered in yellow glazed tiles that shine gold from the sea, and the composer Manuel de Falla, born in the town, is buried in the crypt.
- Torre Tavira · In the eighteenth century the merchants of Cádiz built more than a hundred watchtowers on their houses to be the first to spot their ships coming in from America. This was the official lookout, and at the top a camera obscura projects the live town — streets, roofs, people — onto a white dish in a dark room.
- Oratorio de San Felipe Neri · In 1812, with Napoleon’s armies holding almost all of Spain and besieging Cádiz, the deputies who had taken refuge here met in this church and voted the first Spanish constitution — one of the most liberal in Europe at the time. It was proclaimed on Saint Joseph’s day, and the Spanish still call it La Pepa.
The ocean side
The west side of Cádiz faces the open Atlantic, and the town turns its life toward it: a beach between two castles, a fishermen’s quarter that invented the carnival, and a promenade of gardens on the sea wall. This route ends at sunset on a causeway into the ocean. An hour and a half, flat; check the tide for the castle causeway.
- Plaza de Mina · A square of palms and giant fig trees, laid out on the garden of a convent. Manuel de Falla was born in a house on it in 1876, and the city museum on one side keeps two Phoenician sarcophagi carved with serene human faces — a man found in 1887 and a woman found in 1980.
- Parque Genovés · A garden along the ocean wall with trees clipped into domes and cones, a waterfall and a grotto. It is named after the Genoese merchants who once had a quarter here — one of many foreign communities that came to Cádiz when it held the trade of a continent.
- Castillo de Santa Catalina · Built in the shape of a star right after the English sack of 1596, to make sure it could not happen again. It later served as a military prison, and today it is free to walk in, with exhibitions in the old barracks and the ocean on three sides.
- La Caleta · A small beach in a bay between two castles, with fishing boats pulled up on the sand and an old bathhouse on stilts in the middle. Because it looks like Havana, it was used to film Havana in the James Bond film Die Another Day.
- La Viña · The fishermen’s quarter behind the beach, named after a vineyard that once grew here. It is the heart of the carnival of Cádiz, when groups called chirigotas write and sing satirical songs about the year’s news and politicians, and the whole quarter dresses up for weeks in February.
- Castillo de San Sebastián · A fortress on an islet at the end of a long causeway into the ocean. The Phoenicians are thought to have had a temple to their god Kronos out here, and the causeway is where the town comes to watch the sun go down into the Atlantic.
The sherry triangle
Sherry is made only in the triangle between three towns across the bay from Cádiz, from grapes grown on white chalk soil and aged in barrels under a layer of yeast that the sea air keeps alive. This route visits the three, and the riverfront where Magellan’s fleet set out. A full day; the catamaran to El Puerto, then a car or the train.
- El Puerto de Santa María · Half an hour across the bay by catamaran. Columbus’s pilot Juan de la Cosa lived here, and in 1500 he drew in this town the oldest surviving map that shows the Americas. The bodegas along the river make sherry, and the fried-seafood shops sell it by weight in paper.
- Bodegas Tío Pepe · In the cellars of Jerez the wine sits in old oak barrels stacked in tiers, and each year a little is drawn from the bottom row and topped up from the row above — the solera — so that every glass holds a trace of wine decades old. Over the dry wines a film of yeast called flor grows, and it is the sea air that keeps it alive.
- Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art · Jerez bred the Carthusian horse — monks of the Charterhouse here kept the bloodline pure for centuries — and this school trains Andalusian horses in classical dressage. On show days the horses perform to Spanish music in a hall built for them, in a ballet called How the Andalusian Horses Dance.
- Jerez Cathedral · Jerez is also a capital of flamenco, born in its gypsy quarters of Santiago and San Miguel, and many of the great flamenco singers came from these streets. The cathedral stands on the site of the great mosque, with the Moorish fortress of the town beside it.
- Sanlúcar de Barrameda · At the mouth of the Guadalquivir, the river that carried the ships to Seville. Magellan’s fleet sailed from here in September 1519 to go round the world; three years later a single ship of the five came back here with eighteen men. Columbus left from here on his third voyage.
- Bajo de Guía · The riverfront of Sanlúcar, lined with seafood restaurants facing the national park of Doñana across the water. The wine here is manzanilla, the driest and saltiest of the sherries, and locals swear the sea breeze at the river mouth is what makes it different. The prawns of Sanlúcar are its partner.
Getting to Cadiz and getting around
- Jerez Airport · The nearest airport, forty minutes by train; Seville is the bigger one
- Cádiz Station · Trains to Jerez and Seville from the edge of the old town
Cheap eats in Cadiz
Cádiz invented the way Andalusia eats fish: pescaíto frito, small fish and squid dusted in flour and fried in olive oil, sold by weight in a paper cone, a few euro, eaten walking. Add tortillitas de camarones, crisp lacy fritters of tiny shrimp, and in spring the red tuna of the almadraba, the trap nets the coast has set for three thousand years. With all of it, a cold glass of fino or manzanilla.
- Plaza de las Flores · Fried fish by weight in paper, standing
- La Viña · Shrimp fritters and grilled sardines in the quarter’s bars
- Barbate · Bluefin tuna from the almadraba, raw and grilled, in spring
- Bajo de Guía · Sanlúcar prawns and manzanilla by the river
- Medina Sidonia · Alfajores, almond and honey sweets of Moorish origin
- El Puerto de Santa María · Shellfish sold by weight at the fried-food counters
Museums in Cadiz
Cádiz has been continuously lived in for three thousand years, and each era left its museum: Phoenician streets under a theatre, a Roman theatre under a quarter, an eighteenth-century trading town seen through a camera obscura, and the church where modern Spain’s first constitution was written.
- Gadir · Phoenician streets under glass floors
- Museo de Cádiz · The Phoenician sarcophagi, a man and a woman
- Torre Tavira · The camera obscura shows the live town
- Oratorio de San Felipe Neri · Where the 1812 constitution was voted
- Roman Theatre · Found after a warehouse fire in 1980
- Baelo Claudia · A whole Roman town on the beach, with its fish factory
Nature and day trips near Cadiz
The Costa de la Luz, the coast of light, runs south from Cádiz to Tarifa: long white beaches open to the Atlantic, dunes and pine forests, salt marshes full of birds, and at the end the strait where Europe and Africa almost touch and the wind never stops.
- Bolonia Dune · Climb the dune and run down to the sea
- Tarifa · The wind, the strait and Africa in view
- Cape Trafalgar · A lighthouse on a sandy cape; sunset
- Playa de la Victoria · Kilometres of sand at the edge of town
- Zahara de los Atunes · A wild beach and the tuna village
- Bajo de Guía · Boats across to the Doñana national park
Things to do in Cadiz with kids
Castles on the beach, a dark room where the town appears on a dish, a giant sand dune and horses that dance: Cádiz is easy with children. The beaches are wide and sandy, but the Atlantic is colder and has more surf than the Mediterranean.
- Torre Tavira · The camera obscura amazes every age
- Castillo de Santa Catalina · A free star-shaped fort to explore
- La Caleta · A sheltered beach between the castles
- Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art · The horse ballet
- Bolonia Dune · A mountain of sand to slide down
- Parque Genovés · A garden with a waterfall and a grotto
Holy places in Cadiz
The Phoenicians worshipped Melqart, the god of Tyre, in a famous temple on an island off Cádiz, and Hannibal came to it before he marched on Rome. Little of it remains. The town’s Christian monuments came later, mostly with the American trade, and its gold dome is the sign of that wealth.
- Cádiz Cathedral · The golden dome and Falla’s tomb
- Oratorio de San Felipe Neri · An oval church with a Murillo over the altar
- Castillo de San Sebastián · Thought to be the site of a Phoenician temple
- Jerez Cathedral · On the site of the great mosque of Jerez
- Vejer de la Frontera · Women once wore the cobijada, a black veil leaving one eye
Nightlife in Cadiz
Cádiz goes out late and outdoors, in the bars of La Viña and around the squares of the old town, and in February its carnival is one of the great street parties of Spain. In summer the beach bars of the Costa de la Luz and the kitesurfers’ town of Tarifa take over.
- La Viña · The carnival quarter and its bars
- Gran Teatro Falla · The carnival song contest in February
- Castillo de San Sebastián · Sunset on the causeway
- Tarifa · Surfers’ bars and late nights in summer
- Jerez Cathedral · Flamenco in the peñas of Jerez
Frequently asked questions about Cadiz
What is there to see in Cadiz?
The top sights in Cadiz are Cádiz Cathedral, Torre Tavira and Oratorio de San Felipe Neri. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Cadiz?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Cadiz without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Cadiz?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Cadiz, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Three thousand years on a sandbar.
How do you get to Cadiz and get around?
The main ways are Jerez Airport and Cádiz Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Cadiz, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Cadiz that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Cadiz for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.