Málaga is a port city on southern Spain’s Costa del Sol, known for its high-rise hotels and resorts jutting up from yellow-sand beaches. Looming over that modern skyline are the city’s 2 massive hilltop citadels, the Alcazaba and ruined Gibralfaro, remnants of Moorish rule. The city’s soaring Renaissance cathedral is nicknamed La Manquita (“one-armed lady”) because one of its towers was curiously left unbuilt.

If you think the Costa del Sol is soulless, you clearly haven’t been to Málaga. Loaded with history and brimming with a youthful vigor that proudly acknowledges its multi-layered past, the city that gave the world Picasso has transformed itself in spectacular fashion in the last decade, with half a dozen new art galleries, a radically rethought port area and a nascent art district called Soho. Not that Málaga was ever lacking in energy: the Spanish-to-the-core bar scene could put bags under eyes of an insomniac madrileño, while the food culture encompasses both Michelin stars and tastefully tatty fish shacks.