A Spanish city on the African coast, where façades ripple as in Barcelona and four religions have lived side by side for generations: Melilla is unlike any other port of call in the Mediterranean. Ships moor right at the foot of the city, and the gangway opens onto one of the most unique architectural ensembles in Spain.

Standing on Its Rock

The first image as you step onto the quay: Melilla la Vieja, the historic citadel, raises its golden walls above the port. Built between the 15th and 18th centuries on a rocky spur, it can be explored like a book of fortifications: angled gates, bastions, casemates, vaulted cisterns, chapels and history museums tucked into the former military storehouses. The Conventico caves, dug beneath the ramparts, served as shelter for the inhabitants during sieges; their route emerges facing the sea, in full sunlight, through a spectacular opening in the cliff.

The Modernist Golden Triangle

Below, the new town holds the real surprise. In the early 20th century, architect Enrique Nieto, trained in Barcelona in the wake of Gaudí, covered the city with Art Nouveau façades: stone flowers, whiplash ironwork, undulating cornices, stained glass and bay windows that surprise at every intersection. Melilla preserves one of the largest concentrations of Modernist architecture in Spain after Barcelona, hundreds of buildings grouped around Plaza de España and the main avenue. The town hall itself, a domed palace designed by Nieto, presides over the square, and Hernández Park extends the walk beneath the palm trees. Strolling with your eyes turned upward is the main activity here, ten minutes on foot from the ship.

Four Cultures Beneath the Same Balconies

Nieto designed bourgeois apartment buildings as well as the synagogue, the central mosque and churches: a built summary of a city where Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus share the same streets. This diversity can be tasted quite literally: honey and almond pastries, tagines and paellas share the menus, and the cafés, at teatime as at tapas time, tell of a multicultural Spain facing two continents at once. When school lets out, uniforms, kippahs, headscarves and saris cross paths without anyone paying attention: normality is the true monument here.

Between Seas of Sand and Water

The waterfront lines up its dark-sand beaches south of the citadel, popular with families as soon as the weather turns fine; the city even has a bullring, the only one on the African continent. From the top of the batteries, you can follow the ballet of ferries heading for Málaga or Almería, the city's lifeline to the peninsula. The ramparts offer the finest viewpoints: on one side the port and the Mediterranean, on the other the Rif hills closing off the horizon. Here, better than anywhere else, you grasp the extraordinary situation of this twelve-square-kilometre enclave, a Spanish lookout perched on the African shore since 1497.

The Port of Call at a Glance

• Docking at the foot of the city, citadel and Modernist centre accessible on foot in ten to fifteen minutes.
• Melilla la Vieja: ramparts, museums and the Conventico caves.
• Modernist ensemble around Plaza de España, ideal for a free-form stroll.
• Spanish currency and language, no special formalities for the stop.

The Lookout Recedes

From the deck, the citadel shrinks on its rock while the Rif turns blue behind it. You have spent a few hours walking through an African Spain whose existence few travellers suspect, between Art Nouveau scrolls and siege walls. The most unexpected ports of call are often the ones you talk about longest back home; this one is undoubtedly among them.