Peñíscola Old Town and Walls

Peñíscola's old town fits inside the wall: about 510 houses on 27 narrow, steep streets that climb the rock to the Papa Luna castle. You walk it, with no ticket, in a good hour if you stop at every corner. These are the stops the tourism website points out and the order that works best.

The gates in the wall

Enter by the Portal de Sant Pere, built in 1411, in the time of Benedict XIII, to give the city an entrance from the sea: the water reached the walls until the fishing port was built in 1925. In the centre it bears the coat of arms of Papa Luna. Tradition says Saint Vincent Ferrer came in this way to ask the Pope to abdicate, and that the answer was the famous "non possumus".

The other great gate is the Portal Fosc, which until the 18th century was the only land entrance to the fortress. It was made in the time of Philip II, to a design by Vespasiano Gonzaga with works directed by Bautista Antonelli; on the outside it has a monumental doorway with the royal coat of arms and, inside, a guardroom and a second arch opening onto the town.

Inside the old town

Among the streets, look for the Casa de las Conchas (House of Shells), whose façade a neighbouring couple began covering with shells in the 1950s and which is now lined entirely. Nearby is the Font de la Petxina, ordered built by Philip II in the second half of the 16th century and which was a great public washhouse. The church of Santa María dates from the 13th century, as its Romanesque doorway shows; it was rebuilt after a fire in the mid-14th and the present building is mostly from the 18th. It keeps pieces of silverwork from the papal period. The Plaza de Santa María served as a set for Game of Thrones in 2015 and for El chiringuito de Pepe in 2014.

The Sea Museum (Museo de la Mar), in the former Príncipe bastion, has free admission and tells the town's seafaring history; Berlanga shot scenes of Calabuch there in 1956. Next to it is the Bufador, the natural tunnel through which the sea shoots out in stormy weather.

The gardens and La Porteta

End at the Artillery Park, the castle gardens linking the medieval and Renaissance walls. There are the powder magazine and a hidden passage that goes down to La Porteta, the old landing stage and customs house outside the wall. In the same gardens, the Calvario bastion, designed by Antonelli, has vaulted casemates which between 1912 and 1971 were schools: the gun loops served as windows.

Practical tips

You can bring a dog on a lead, but there are many stairs and narrow streets: it is hard with a pushchair. In summer, better early in the morning or at dusk, when the sun is less fierce on the slopes. With children, the town council's Pirate Trail covers almost all these stops with a character and videos. Finish with the Papa Luna castle and, for lunch inside the walls, El Raconet de Ca Deu. The tourist office, on the seafront promenade, gives you the map.

The Game of Thrones streets

The sixth season of Game of Thrones was filmed in Peñíscola in 2015. Peñíscola Turismo marks as the series' filming locations the wall's walkway, the Plaza de Santa María, the Philip II Ramp, the Artillery Park and the Portal Fosc: almost all of this walk. To follow them with the tourist office's map, and those of El Cid or Calabuch, see the Peñíscola Cinema route.