Besalú

Besalú takes just a few hours: the fortified Romanesque bridge over the Fluvià River, with its distinctive broken angle, is the village's defining postcard, along with a virtually intact medieval old town and a 12th-century Jewish ritual bath (mikveh), one of the few preserved in all of Europe. April-October is best. It's cheap and compact, ideal as a half-day stop on the way to the Catalan Pyrenees. It was the capital of an independent county in the Middle Ages and keeps that urban layout almost unaltered, which made it a recurring filming location for historical series and movies.