Peñíscola Castle

Where it sits. The castle occupies the summit of the Peniscola crag, roughly 64 metres above the Mediterranean at the top of the old town, on the northern coast of the province of Castellon. Every side but the landward isthmus falls to the sea. The site had been fortified since Islamic rule — an Andalusi hisn stood here, and the castle's cisterns and part of its lower foundations belong to that period — but what a visitor climbs to today is a Templar fortress on an Arab base, with Renaissance gun platforms wrapped around the rock below it. The final approach is a steep cobbled ramp through the town, and the entrance opens onto a bare stone courtyard with no shade at all.

Built by the Templars. The Order of the Temple received Peniscola in 1294 and built the present castle between then and 1307, the year before the order's suppression began in France. The architecture is unmistakably theirs: severe, unornamented ashlar, semicircular arches, barrel and pointed vaults, and no decoration beyond the necessary. The chapel, the great hall, the stables and the tower rooms are laid out around a courtyard on a plan closer to a monastery than a palace. After the order was dissolved the castle passed in 1319 to the Order of Montesa, the Valencian successor foundation, which held it for a century.

A papal seat. In 1411 the castle became the residence of Benedict XIII, born Pedro Martinez de Luna and known throughout Spain as Papa Luna — the Aragonese claimant of the Western Schism, elected at Avignon in 1394 and deposed by the Council of Constance in 1417, a judgment he never accepted. He ruled his shrinking obedience from this rock, established a library and a chancery here, and died in the castle in 1423, probably in his eighties. His successor Clement VIII held out at Peniscola until 1429 before submitting to Rome. The rooms shown as the papal apartments, the chapel where he said Mass, and the conclave hall are the emotional centre of the visit, and the interpretation panels handle the schism with more care than the subject usually receives.

On screen. Peniscola's castle and the terraced gardens and gun platforms immediately below it were used by the HBO production of Game of Thrones in October 2015 as the city of Meereen for the sixth season, with the pyramid of the Great Masters added digitally above the skyline. The Parc d'Artilleria, the walled garden between the castle and the sea, appears in the fourth episode of that season in the scene where Tyrion Lannister, Missandei and Grey Worm walk and argue about the future of the city. Half a century earlier the same walls stood in for Valencia in Anthony Mann's El Cid, filmed in 1961 with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren, and the town has kept a permanent display about that production.

What is worth the climb. The views are the reason to be at the top: north over the five-kilometre sweep of the Platja Nord, south to the harbour and the fishing fleet, west inland to the Serra d'Irta, and straight down to water that is startlingly clear against the rock. Inside, the vaulted spaces are cool and almost empty of furnishing, which suits the architecture. The Bufador, a sea-driven blowhole in the rock behind the castle, and the Renaissance walls circuit both connect directly to the castle visit and are usually walked in the same hour.

The lighthouse and the walls below. A lighthouse of 1892 stands on the seaward side of the castle enclosure, still in service and visible far out into the Mediterranean, and the Renaissance walls wrapping the rock beneath the fortress can be walked almost continuously from the Portal de Sant Pere round to the Parc d'Artilleria. Smaller collections in the lanes on the climb — on the schism, on the Mediterranean fisheries, on the town's long film history — fill out the visit for anyone wanting more than an hour on the crag.

Practicalities. The castle opens daily on a seasonal timetable, with shorter afternoons in winter and a small admission charge; combined tickets with the town's other museums exist. There is no lift and no step-free route — the climb from the isthmus is steep, the internal stairs are worn stone, and the whole visit is unsuitable for wheelchairs and hard on small children in summer heat. Water and a hat are not optional in July and August, when the rock radiates heat well into the evening. Reaching the gate within the first hour of opening avoids both the temperature and the tour groups that arrive from the coastal resorts by mid-morning. April to June and September to October are the comfortable months, and the low evening light from the west turns the whole crag the colour of the stone it is built from.