Hiking Bases

Set at the mouth of the Verdon Gorge, Moustiers-Sainte-Marie has been a center of faience pottery production since the 17th century.

Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert grew up around the 9th-century Abbey of Gellone, a stop on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela that earned the abbey its place on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

Vézelay's hilltop basilica, a starting point for medieval pilgrims heading to Santiago de Compostela, is itself inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Castelrotto sits at the foot of the Alpe di Siusi, the largest high alpine meadow in Europe.

Grazalema is the highest of the white villages of the Sierra de Cádiz, set inside Spain's wettest natural park.

La Alberca was the first village in Spain to be granted national historic-monument status, in 1940.

Potes sits at the confluence of four valleys in the Picos de Europa, its medieval bridges and a fortified tower marking the gateway into the mountain range.

Zahara de la Sierra is built beneath a Moorish castle ruin, overlooking a turquoise reservoir that floods what was once the valley floor below — one of the smaller and steeper of the Cádiz pueblos blancos.

Hallstatt has lent its name to an entire prehistoric era — the Hallstatt culture — after Iron Age salt-mining artifacts were uncovered in the mountain above the village.