No Spanish place name holds as much mysterious promise as Zaragoza. It sounds like a magic word, the last phonetic flourish of a witch’s spell. Appropriate, given the city almost feels conjured from the wind-whipped moors around halfway between Madrid and Barcelona. Standing on the River Ebro, this provincial capital has witnessed centuries of turbulence as the capital of the former kingdom of Aragón — adomain variously occupied over the millennia by Romans, Islamic caliphates, Catholic monarchs and the forces of General Franco.
All left their mark on the present architecture, but there are few buildings more evocative than the baroque spires around the mighty basilica of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, which marks the spot where the Virgin Mary supposedly appeared to St James in AD 40. Step inside and you’ll find its inner domes coloured by the art of Francisco de Goya, the artist born close enough to the city in 1746 to qualify as a local hero.
The master painter’s ubiquitous work remains a totem of Zaragoza’s abiding creative
