Monturque

Head south out of Córdoba on NIV to follow the Wine Road (Ruta del Vino) on a journey to Granada at the foot of the Sierra Nevada. At Cuesta del Espino, bear southeast on N331 through Fernán Nuñez and Montemayor—with 18th- and 14th-century castles—to Montilla, an ancient town perched on two hills. A short time later Aguilar de la Frontera appears, an old hilltop town whose whitewashed, octagonal plaza of San José is particularly charming. Before turning northeast to Cabra, you see Monturque, with fragments of its ancient town walls; and Lucena, a center of the Andalusian wine trade (in whose ruined Alcázar the last Moorish king in Spain, Boabdil, was once held prisoner). Near Cabra are the ruins of the Castillo de los Condes and San Juan Bautista church, one of the oldest in Andalusia.