Cadaqués

Reached over a mountain pass and cut off from the rest of the coast, which is why it still looks like itself. White houses stacked round a bay of dark rock and clear water, black-and-white pebble streets, and boats pulled up on the shingle.

The whiteness is the point for a photographer: it bounces light back up into faces, so this is one of the few coastal locations that works in the middle of the day rather than only at its ends. Dalí lived in the next cove along at Portlligat, and the landscape he kept painting is the one you will be standing in.

The road in is slow and the village is small. It rewards half a day rather than a stop.