There’s a particular moment that I think about whenever someone asks me why I never left.
It was an October morning, a few years after I’d moved here from the UK. I was sitting outside a small café in the old quarter of Altea — the one with the blue and white tiled church dome visible above the rooftops — nursing a café con leche and watching an elderly man sweep the cobblestones outside his front door with the kind of unhurried precision that only comes from doing something your whole life. The air smelled of jasmine and last night’s rain. The sea was visible between two whitewashed walls in the middle distance, flat and silver-blue. A cat was asleep on a warm stone step.
That was it. That was the thing no travel brochure ever quite manages to capture.
The Costa Blanca — Spain’s “White Coast,” stretching along the southeastern seaboard of the Comunitat Valenciana — is one of those places that reveals itself slowly to the people who pay attention. Most visitors know the name. Many have been. But surprisingly few have scratched beneath the surface of what is, in my genuinely biased opinion, one of the most varied, culturally rich, and simply pleasurable stretches of coastline in the entire Mediterranean.
This Costa Blanca travel guide exists to change that. Whether you’re planning your first visit, your fifteenth, or quietly wondering whether you could actually live here (spoiler: you could), consider this your definitive starting point. I’ve spent years living along this coastline — shopping at the Wednesday mercadillo in Benissa, eating fideuà at a restaurant in Calp where the menu hasn’t changed in twenty years, hiking the Montgó mountain before the summer heat sets in, and watching the whole of Alcoi transform into a medieval battlefield every April. I know this place. Travel to Costa Blanca! I want you to know it too.
Table of Contents
What Is the Costa Blanca?
Officially, the Costa Blanca refers to the coastline of the province of Alicante, running roughly 200 kilometres from Dénia in the north to Pilar de la Horadada in the south. The name — possibly attributed to the brilliant white houses or the seemingly sun bleached sands and luminous light that characterize so much of the landscape — was supposedly coined by British European Airways in the 1950s to market the region to holidaymakers. They weren’t wrong about the light.
But the geography is only part of the story. What makes the Costa Blanca distinctive is how dramatically it changes over those 200 kilometres.
Costa Blanca North to South: Two Very Different Experiences
Spend a week in Dénia and a week in Torrevieja and you might struggle to believe you’re in the same province.
Costa Blanca Norte — the northern stretch running from Dénia down through Jávea (Xàbia), Calp, Altea, and Benidorm to Villajoyosa — is characterised by rugged limestone headlands, dramatic cliffs, and a landscape that rises steeply behind the coast. The Montgó massif dominates the north. The Peñón de Ifach — that extraordinary rock that rises 332 metres from the sea at Calp — defines the middle stretch. The towns here tend to be smaller, the pace more relaxed, and there’s a strong Valencian cultural identity running through everything, from the language on the shop signs (Valencian and Spanish co-exist naturally here) to the rice dishes on the menu.
Costa Blanca Sur — sweeping south from Alicante through El Campello, Santa Pola, Guardamar del Segura, and down to Torrevieja and Orihuela Costa — is a completely different character. The landscape flattens into long sandy beaches, salt lagoons shimmering pink with flamingos, and vast agricultural plains producing some of Spain’s finest citrus and vegetables. The towns are broader, the beaches longer, and there’s a larger international community — particularly British, German, and Scandinavian residents — that gives the south a distinctive, multicultural flavour.
And then there’s Alicante itself: the provincial capital sitting at the fulcrum of north and south, with its magnificent castle, its elegant Explanada de España promenade of wave-patterned marble, its surprisingly good food scene, and its very real, working-city energy that reminds you this isn’t a tourist construct — it’s a place where nearly 330,000 people actually live their lives.
The Costa Blanca is not, and has never been, just a beach holiday destination. It’s a living, complex, historically layered region with mountain villages that have barely changed in a century, a remarkable culinary tradition rooted in both sea and land, and a calendar of festivals so passionate and elaborate they’d make a carnival organizer weep with envy. Our mission with this Costa Blanca travel guide is to provide you with an invaluable window into our beloved region of Spain.
Towns & Villages: From Buzz to Beautiful Backstreets
One of the great pleasures of living on the Costa Blanca is that you’re never more than twenty minutes from somewhere entirely different. The variety is extraordinary — and I mean that in the most specific sense possible.
Dénia, in the far north, is a proper town with a castle, a port, a fierce civic pride, and some of the best gambas rojas (red prawns) you’ll eat anywhere in Spain. It’s also a gateway to the Balearic Islands by ferry, which gives it a slight air of transit mixed with destination. Jávea, just to the south, divides between a medieval old town, a busy port, and a dramatic rocky cape — three different Jáveas, essentially, each with its own atmosphere.
Calp has the Peñón, obviously — but it also has a genuinely atmospheric old quarter that most visitors walk straight past on their way to the beach. Altea, where I lived for several years, is the one that tends to convert people: the old hilltop pueblo with its distinctive blue-tiled church dome, its artists’ galleries and craft shops, its ridiculously photogenic alleyways. It has a reputation as the “prettiest village on the Costa Blanca” and, while I wouldn’t want to start arguments, it’s hard to dispute.
Then there’s Benidorm — and I say this as someone who spent years quietly rolling their eyes at it before actually spending time there properly. Benidorm is extraordinary. Not despite what it is, but because of it. The twin beaches of Levante and Poniente are genuinely spectacular. The old town, perched on a headland between them, has real charm. The skyline is unlike anything else in Europe. It’s brash, it’s fun, it never stops, and it does what it does better than almost anywhere else on Earth. Don’t be a travel snob about Benidorm. It earned its place.
South of Alicante, Santa Pola’s fishing harbour still functions exactly as you’d hope — go on a weekday morning and watch the catch being brought in. Guardamar del Segura has pine forests that run directly onto the beach, which is as surreal and lovely as it sounds. Torrevieja, with its two salt lagoons and its enormous international community, has more life to it than its reputation sometimes suggests.
And beyond the coast, inland of Costa Blanca: Guadalest, the mountain village built into a rock and accessible through a tunnel — impossibly dramatic. Polop, with its famous fountain of 221 taps. Villena, inland in the north, with its hilltop castle and famous archaeological gold. These are places that reward the curious.
For a thorough exploration of everywhere worth knowing, our Complete Guide to Towns & Villages on the Costa Blanca covers every significant settlement with the detail it deserves.
The Beaches: More Than Just Sand
I’ve swum on this coastline in every month of the year, including a slightly regrettable January plunge at Playa del Albir that I maintain was absolutely worth it. The point is: the beaches of the Costa Blanca are not a single experience. They are a landscape of extraordinary variety, and getting to know them is one of the real pleasures of spending time here.
In the north, the beaches are often small and intimate — tucked into coves between the headlands, with clear, deep water and pebbly shores that locals will tell you are better for swimming. Cala Blanca near Jávea. The Granadella cove, hidden behind a pine forest and only accessible by a steep track, where the water is some of the most transparent I’ve seen anywhere in the Mediterranean. Playa de la Barraca near Oliva, where the dunes back onto orange groves.
Further south, the scale shifts dramatically. The beaches at Benidorm are wide and properly long — Levante stretches nearly three kilometres and, despite the crowds in high summer, maintains a surprisingly manageable atmosphere if you arrive before ten. Playa del Albir, backed by the natural park of Serra Gelada, combines fine pebble with extraordinary cliff scenery. The further south you travel, the more the beaches open up into vast sandy expanses — Guardamar’s beach backed by its Aleppo pines, the endless pale-sand stretches of Orihuela Costa.
There are also the beaches that require a little more effort: the tiny coves of the Cabo de la Nao near Jávea, accessible only by boat or a difficult scramble. The nudist beach at El Portitxol. The spectacular Playa de las Rotas in Dénia, where the rocks form natural pools that are extraordinary for snorkelling.
One thing I’d say as a local: resist the gravitational pull of the most famous beach every single day. The Costa Blanca’s hidden coves and quieter stretches are often its most rewarding. Our Best Beaches on the Costa Blanca – The Complete Guide will help you find exactly what you’re looking for.
Things to Do: This Region Will Not Let You Be Bored
In my experience, the Costa Blanca has two types of visitors: those who come to rest, and those who come to do things. The remarkable truth is that the region accommodates both with equal generosity.
For the active traveller, the options are exceptional. The hiking is genuinely world-class — the GR-330 coastal path, the routes through the Montgó Natural Park, the vertiginous climb to the top of the Peñón de Ifach (which I’ve done enough times to know that the view from the top never gets old, but the last scramble always gets my heart rate up). Cycling infrastructure has improved dramatically in recent years, with dedicated routes connecting many of the coastal towns. In the south, the flat landscape around Torrevieja and the salt lakes makes for wonderful cycling that anyone can manage.
On the water: kayaking along the sea caves of the Portitxol headland near Jávea is one of my favourite half-day activities. Stand-up paddleboarding is everywhere along the coast now. Scuba diving centres operate out of several towns, particularly Jávea and Santa Pola — the underwater landscape here, with its posidonia seagrass meadows, is protected and remarkable. Sailing, windsurfing, boat hire — the infrastructure exists right along the coast.
Inland, you can visit working olive and almond farms, try your hand at making paella at a cooking class (though please, as a favor to me and to Valencian culinary tradition, don’t call it the definitive paella if it has chorizo in it), tour the ceramic workshops of El Molinar near Agost, or explore the Caves of Canelobre — a cathedral-like cavern in the mountains behind Busot that genuinely takes your breath away.
The cultural calendar also provides its own entertainment — but more on that shortly. For the full scope of activities, our Best Things to Do on the Costa Blanca is the place to start.
Food & Drink: The Part I Could Write About All Day
Let me tell you about lunch. Not a restaurant lunch — though those are important — but the kind of midday meal you stumble into on a Tuesday in a small village, at a place with four tables, a handwritten menu on a chalkboard, and a smell coming from the kitchen that you realise, about halfway through your first course, is going to stay with you for years.
I’ve had meals like that in Pedreguer market, in a back-street bar in Pego, in a fishing port café in Santa Pola where the old men at the adjacent table didn’t look up from their dominoes once. These are the meals that explain why I live here.
The cuisine of the Costa Blanca is rooted in what the land and sea provide — and both are generous. Rice is the foundation: not just paella (which, incidentally, is a Valencian dish and should be taken seriously as such — made with chicken, rabbit, and sometimes snails, cooked outdoors over orange-wood fire), but arroz a banda, where the fish stock does the heavy lifting and the rice absorbs everything glorious into itself.
Fideuà — the noodle version of paella that Dénia essentially claims as its own. Arroz del senyoret, where the seafood comes pre-shelled so you can eat with dignity. Arroz negro, stained dark with squid ink and served with alioli so sharp and garlicky it clears your sinuses in the best possible way.
Beyond rice, the tapas culture here is quietly excellent in a way that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. A proper tapa in Alicante isn’t an afterthought — it’s a small, confident statement of what the kitchen can do. Croquetas de bacalà. Esgarraet, that simple, perfect combination of roasted red pepper, salt cod, and olive oil. Boquerones fritos — fresh anchovies, lightly battered and fried, eaten with your fingers at a bar while standing up, which is absolutely the correct way to eat them.
The seafood along the whole coast is exceptional, but the north earns particular reverence. The gambas rojas of Dénia — those vivid red prawns fished from the deep cold waters off the cape — are something close to a local religion. I’ve watched grown adults go quiet after eating one. You simply grill them, add sea salt, eat them whole. The head is not optional; the head is mandatory.
Inland, the food shifts character. The mountain villages around the Marina Alta and Marina Baixa are where you find hearty mountain cooking: cocido montañés, roast lamb, embutidos (cured meats) made from the pigs that still roam some of the hillside farms. In autumn, wild mushrooms appear on menus across the region — rossinyols (chanterelles), esclata-sangs (milk caps) — foraged from the pine forests by people who know exactly where to look and will absolutely not tell you.
For wine, look to the Alicante DO — the Monastrell grape produces reds here that are dense and warmly spiced, and the local Fondillón, an aged sweet wine with centuries of history, is unlike anything you’ll find elsewhere. The bodega at Bocopa in Petrer is worth a visit. So is anything produced by Enrique Mendoza near Villena.
The morning ritual of the region deserves its own paragraph: café con leche and a tostada (toasted bread, olive oil, and sometimes tomato rubbed directly onto the surface) consumed standing at a bar, newspapers scattered nearby, the working day beginning in no particular hurry. I have done this approximately ten thousand times and it has not once felt ordinary.
Our Costa Blanca Food Guide – What to Eat & Where goes deep into all of this — with specific restaurant recommendations, market guides, and a full breakdown of the dishes worth seeking out.
Where to Stay: Finding Your Perfect Base
The Costa Blanca offers a spectrum of accommodation so wide that two people could visit the same region with the same budget and have experiences that feel entirely different — and both be happy.
At the high end, the luxury villa market in the north — particularly around Jávea, the Montgó foothills, and the hillsides above Altea — is extraordinary. Properties with private pools, almond and olive groves as gardens, panoramic sea views, and enough space to genuinely feel like you’ve escaped the world. Renting one of these for a week with a group is one of the genuinely transformative holiday experiences available in Spain.
Boutique hotels and rural casas rurales (country house accommodation) have grown significantly across the region over the past decade, and the quality has risen with it. I’d particularly highlight the inland options — there are converted fincas in the valleys behind Benissa and Jalón that offer something you simply cannot get on the coast: genuine silence, orange-blossom air in spring, and the feeling of being inside the real agricultural landscape of this region rather than looking at it from a sun lounger.
For families, the large resort hotels of Benidorm and the southern coast provide excellent value, particularly outside high season. The infrastructure for children — pools, entertainment, beach proximity, easy restaurant access — is genuinely hard to beat. Benidorm in particular has invested heavily in family-friendly facilities over the years, and the result shows.
Apartment rentals, whether through established platforms or directly with local owners (the latter often the better value and better experience), are the accommodation of choice for the large expat community and for return visitors who know what they’re doing. Renting an apartment in a residential building — as opposed to a tourist complex — gives you access to a more textured, local experience: the neighbourhood supermarket, the bar downstairs where the owner knows your name by day three, the Thursday morning market two streets away.
For the full breakdown of options by area, budget, and travel style, the Where to Stay on the Costa Blanca – Complete Accommodation Guide covers everything from five-star hotels to budget-friendly hostels and rural retreats.
Travel to Costa Blanca & Getting Around
The logistics of reaching the Costa Blanca are, frankly, one of its great selling points — particularly for UK and Northern European travellers. Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport is served by an almost embarrassing number of direct routes. In peak season, you can fly directly from most major UK airports — Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Bristol, Belfast, and obviously multiple London airports — as well as from Dublin, Amsterdam, Oslo, Stockholm, Brussels, and elsewhere across Northern Europe. Flight times from the UK hover around two to two and a half hours, which means you can leave home on a grey Tuesday morning and be eating gambas by a harbour at lunchtime. I’ve done exactly this. It’s a reasonable life choice.
Murcia-Corvera Airport, about an hour south of Alicante, serves the southern Costa Blanca particularly well and has expanded its route network significantly in recent years. If you’re staying in Torrevieja, Orihuela Costa, or anywhere in the deep south, it’s worth checking.
Valencia Airport, roughly 100 kilometres north of Dénia, opens up the northern Costa Blanca beautifully and has the added advantage of giving you an excuse to spend a day in Valencia itself — of which more later.
Once you’re here, the question of getting around is one where I’ll give you the honest local’s answer: for the Costa Blanca in its full variety, you want a car. Not because public transport doesn’t exist — the TRAM coastal rail line running from Alicante to Dénia is genuinely useful and scenically lovely — but because the inland villages, the hidden beaches, the mountain roads to Guadalest, the Tuesday market at Benissa, and the bodega that doesn’t have a bus stop within five kilometres all require wheels.
Hiring a car is straightforward and relatively affordable at Alicante Airport, though I’d strongly recommend booking in advance during July and August when supply gets genuinely tight. Driving here is easy for UK visitors — the roads are generally good, the signage clear, and Spaniards are, in my experience, significantly more patient drivers than their reputation suggests. Parking in the old towns can be a challenge in high summer, but most have reasonably priced municipal car parks within walking distance.
For those who prefer not to drive, the TRAM is excellent for the coastal strip, and there are good bus connections (ALSA operates the main network) between most significant towns. Taxis are affordable by Western European standards, and rideshare apps now operate in Alicante and Benidorm.
Full details on every way to get here and move around are in our Costa Blanca Transport Guide– Flights, Transfers & Getting Around
Planning Your Trip: The Essentials
When Is the Best Time to Visit the Costa Blanca?
This is the question I get asked most often, and my honest answer always surprises people: my favourite time to visit is not July or August.
Don’t misunderstand me — summer on the Costa Blanca is wonderful in its way. The beaches are glorious, the evenings are warm and social, the towns are alive until two in the morning, and there’s an energy to the place in high season that’s genuinely exhilarating. But it’s also hot — sometimes brutally so, with inland temperatures regularly touching 38–40°C in July — the best beaches are busy, accommodation prices peak sharply, and the region takes on a slightly overwhelming tourist-town quality in the most popular spots.
Spring (April to June) is when this landscape is at its absolute finest. The almond blossom has been and gone by February, but the orange groves are fragrant, the hillsides are green and wildflower-scattered, the sea is warm enough to swim by late May, and the towns operate at a human pace. Hiking is superb in these months. The festivals — Moors and Christians in many towns through April and May — are extraordinary. Prices are reasonable. Restaurants have tables available.
Autumn (September to November) runs spring a very close second. The sea retains its summer warmth well into October. The tourist crowds have thinned significantly after the first week of September. The light changes — softer, more golden — and the landscape takes on the warm amber tones of harvest season. The grape harvest in September brings life to the inland bodegas. October and November can bring some rain, but it tends to arrive in dramatic, brief episodes rather than the sustained grey drizzle of Northern Europe.
Winter is the secret the expat community has been quietly exploiting for decades. January and February can see daily temperatures of 16–18°C and brilliant sunshine. The almond blossom arrives from late January — vast pink-white clouds of it across the inland valleys around Callosa d’en Sarrià — and it is one of the most quietly beautiful things I have witnessed. The towns return to their residents. Restaurant owners remember your name. This is the Costa Blanca as the people who live here know it.
Practical notes: The currency is the Euro. EU citizens and most UK visitors (post-Brexit, under 90-day rules) require no visa for tourist stays. Spanish is the primary language throughout, with Valencian widely spoken and signed in the north. English is spoken in most tourist-facing businesses, but learning a few phrases of Spanish will genuinely change your experience — even just “buenos días,” “por favor,” and “qué rico” (how delicious) will earn you warmth.
For everything else you need to prepare — from travel insurance advice to packing lists by season — our Planning Your Costa Blanca Holiday – Essential Travel Guide has you covered.
Festivals & Events: Where the Region Comes Alive
I want to tell you about the moment I understood that I’d truly moved somewhere extraordinary.
It was my first Moros y Cristianos in Alcoi — the granddaddy of all the Moors and Christians festivals that take place across the region, held every April in commemoration of the medieval battles between Muslim and Christian forces. I knew it was supposed to be impressive. I was not prepared for what it actually was.
The whole city — and I mean the whole city, every resident, every street — transformed over three days into something between a historical pageant, a theatrical production, and a collective spiritual act. Costumes that individuals and families had been preparing and saving for all year. Muskets firing volleys of smoke that rolled down narrow streets.
Brass bands playing the Moors and Christians music — a specific genre, this, with a sound like no other festival music I’ve encountered — loud enough to rattle windows. Children in full warrior costumes, tiny but utterly serious about their role. The final day, when the Christian forces symbolically retake the castle and bells ring across the city, produced in me — a fairly unsentimental person from the Midlands — something perilously close to tears.
Moros y Cristianos takes place in various forms across dozens of Costa Blanca towns throughout the year. Alcoi’s is the oldest and largest. Villajoyosa’s, held in July, involves a mock sea battle in the harbour that is as absurd and magnificent as it sounds. Each town’s version has its own character, its own music, its own costumes.
But the festival calendar extends far beyond this single tradition. The Hogueras de San Juan in Alicante every June — enormous satirical sculptures erected across the city and then burned on the longest night of the year, the air thick with woodsmoke and gunpowder and the smell of the sea — is one of the great urban celebrations in Spain. Every June, I find myself standing on a street corner at midnight watching something that took months to create being reduced to ash with enormous collective joy, and thinking: yes, this is the right way to mark the turning of summer.
La Tomatina, the famous tomato-throwing festival, takes place in Buñol — technically in the Province of Valencia rather than Alicante, but close enough to the northern Costa Blanca to make an easy day trip in late August. Semana Santa (Holy Week) in March or April sees solemn, candlelit processions through the old towns of Orihuela and Villena that are genuinely moving. The Misteri d’Elx — a UNESCO-protected medieval mystery play performed in Elche every August — is something that most visitors to the Costa Blanca never know exists, which is their loss and your opportunity.
Every September, I watch my neighbours in the village spend weeks preparing their costumes for the local fiestas patronales — the patron saint festivals that animate every town and village in the region, usually involving several days of music, dancing, fireworks (the traca, a long chain of firecrackers detonated along the street, is a Valencian tradition that will either delight or horrify you depending on your relationship with sudden loud noises), fairground rides, and the kind of collective, multi-generational street party that Northern European culture has largely forgotten how to throw.
For the complete calendar of what’s happening when and where, our Costa Blanca Festivals & Events – The Ultimate Calendar is the definitive resource.
Nature & the Outdoors: More Than Just a Pretty Coastline
The Costa Blanca has a quietly remarkable natural environment — and I use the word “quietly” deliberately, because it tends to be overshadowed by the beach and festival headline acts. This is a mistake.
The Montgó Natural Park, rising between Dénia and Jávea to 753 metres, is the landmark that orients the northern Costa Blanca. From certain angles it resembles a sleeping elephant, which is either fanciful or accurate depending on how you look at it.
The park encompasses dramatic limestone cliffs dropping directly into the sea, cave systems used by prehistoric humans, an extraordinary variety of endemic plant species adapted to the thin limestone soils, and hiking trails that take you from sea level to summit with views across to Ibiza on a clear day. I’ve walked every trail up there at least once. The spring wildflower display — with orchids, cistus, rosemary, and lavender covering the lower slopes — is something I look forward to every year.
The Penyal d’Ifac Natural Park at Calp is smaller but vertically dramatic — that 332-metre limestone monolith rising directly from the sea, connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The hike to the summit involves a tunnel blasted through the rock near the top, which emerges onto a ridge with views that make the effort instantly worthwhile. Bring proper shoes; it’s not a casual stroll.
South of Alicante, the nature is different in character but no less interesting. The salt lakes of Torrevieja — La Laguna Rosa and La Laguna Verde — are a genuinely surreal landscape. The larger lake turns various shades of pink depending on the season and the salinity levels, and in winter it hosts flamingos, avocets, and other wading birds in significant numbers. Standing at the edge of a pink lake in a flat, sun-bleached landscape with flamingos wading in the middle distance is not what most people picture when they think of a Spanish seaside holiday, but it’s absolutely real and absolutely worth making time for.
The Cabo de Santa Pola Natural Park protects the wetlands and dunes around the cape south of Alicante — another important bird habitat, particularly during migration seasons. The Salinas de Santa Pola are active salt workings that also function as one of the best birding sites on the entire Spanish Mediterranean coast. Early morning in spring or autumn, with a pair of binoculars and no particular agenda, is time very well spent here.
Inland, the Sierra de Aitana — the highest massif in the province, reaching 1,558 metres — offers a complete landscape change from the coast. Pine forests, cold springs, the mountain village of Sella clinging to a steep hillside, and enough altitude to sometimes see snow in January, which never stops being slightly surreal when you drove up from 18°C sunshine at sea level.
The full scope of the region’s natural heritage — parks, protected areas, wildlife, walking routes, and practical guidance — is covered in our Costa Blanca Nature Guide – Parks, Mountains & Natural Wonders.
Costa Blanca the History & Culture: Layers Upon Layers
One of the things that distinguishes the Costa Blanca from purely resort-focused coastlines is the sheer density of its history. This has been a settled, contested, cultivated, and culturally productive landscape for millennia, and the evidence is everywhere once you start looking.
The Iberians were here — the archaeological museum at Villena holds the famous Tesoro de Villena, a collection of Bronze Age gold objects discovered in 1963 that ranks among the most important prehistoric finds in all of Spain. Forty pieces of worked gold, dating to around 1000 BCE, sitting in a regional museum in a mid-sized inland town. If that were in London or Madrid it would have queues around the block.
The Romans built Lucentum on the headland now known as El Tossal de Manises, on the northern outskirts of Alicante — the ruins are still visible and accessible, and the adjacent MARQ archaeological museum in Alicante city is one of the best regional archaeology museums in Spain, with an immersive approach to its collections that makes it genuinely engaging even for those who don’t think of themselves as museum people.
The Moorish period — from the 8th to the 13th centuries — left the deepest imprint on the landscape and the culture. The terraced hillsides still farmed around Jalón and Benissa were engineered during this period. The irrigation systems that water the huerta (market garden) landscape of the south are largely Moorish in origin. The castles — Denia, Biar, Banyeres de Mariola, Petrer, Villena — sit on their hilltops with a commanding logic that reminds you why they were built where they were. Walking up to the castle in Guadalest on a winter morning, with mist in the valley below and the reservoir a deep turquoise behind the fortified gate, it’s not difficult to feel the weight of centuries.
The Reconquista — the gradual Christian reconquest of the peninsula — reached this region in the 13th century, and the Moors and Christians festivals that still animate every town are the living cultural memory of that transition. This is not re-enactment for tourists. This is a community processing its own history through music, costume, and collective ritual, year after year. Understanding that makes the festivals land very differently.
Later history brought the Spanish Civil War (there are moving memorials and some significant historical sites across the province), the post-war poverty that drove emigration, and then the extraordinary economic transformation wrought by tourism from the 1960s onwards — a transformation so rapid and so total that it reshaped the coastline physically and demographically within a single generation.
The Modernista architectural tradition, most associated with Catalonia but present here too, produced some striking buildings in Novelda — the Casa Modernista and the extraordinary Sanctuary of Santa María Magdalena, a building that looks like Gaudí and Frank Lloyd Wright collaborated on a fever dream, sitting on a hilltop outside town. It’s one of the most under-visited remarkable buildings in Spain, and I say that with mild personal outrage.
Dive much deeper into all of this with our Costa Blanca History & Culture – A Journey Through Time.
Day Trips: Beyond the Costa Blanca
Living here has made me an evangelist for day trips, because the Costa Blanca sits within easy reach of some genuinely world-class destinations that are easy to reach and deeply worth the effort.
Valencia is the big one — Spain’s third city, roughly 100 kilometres north of Dénia and easily reachable by train from Alicante or by car in under two hours from most points on the Costa Blanca Norte. Valencia is extraordinary: the medieval old city with its Gothic cathedral and bustling Central Market, the futuristic City of Arts and Sciences complex by Santiago Calatrava sitting at the end of the old Turia riverbed-turned-park, the beach suburb of La Malvarrosa where real paella was born and where you can still eat it properly in the old-school restaurants that line the seafront. A day isn’t enough for Valencia. Go for two. Go for a week. But definitely go.
Murcia to the south is less visited but rewards the effort — a handsome baroque cathedral, a thriving tapas culture centred around the Trapería and surrounding streets, and a relaxed, slightly under-discovered city energy that feels like Spain before the tourists arrived. The casino building — a private members club that happens to have one of the most extravagant interiors in the country, with rooms in Moorish, Pompeian, and Louis XV styles layered on top of each other with magnificent excess — is open to visitors and should not be missed.
Orihuela is closer and often overlooked: a small city in the Vega Baja with a disproportionate concentration of baroque churches, a Gothic cathedral with a Velázquez painting inside, and a lovely old quarter that functions as an actual working Spanish town rather than a heritage display. The poet Miguel Hernández — one of the most important voices of 20th-century Spanish poetry — was born here, and the town’s relationship with his memory is genuine and moving.
Inland, the route through the Jalón Valley in spring — when the almond and cherry blossom turns the hillsides white and pink simultaneously — is one of the most beautiful drives in this part of Spain. The villages of Jalón (Xaló), Llíber, and Alcalalí each have their own character, their own cooperative winery, and their own reasons to stop.
Discover the full range of possibilities in our Best Day Trips from the Costa Blanca.
Itineraries: Making the Most of Your Time
The Costa Blanca rewards every length of visit, but the shape of your trip matters. Spending a week in one resort and never venturing beyond it is a valid holiday. It is not, however, the best use of what this region offers.
For a long weekend (3–4 days): Base yourself in Alicante, which gives you the city, the castle, the Explanada, and the beach, plus easy day-trip access to Elche (with its extraordinary palm grove — the largest in Europe — and the date palms that have shaded the city since the Moors planted them a thousand years ago) and the hill town of Guadalest. Eat at the Mercado Central. Walk up to the Castillo de Santa Bárbara at sunset. Drink rebujito at a bar on the Barrio Santa Cruz. You’ll go home wanting more, which is intentional.
For one week: Consider splitting your time between north and south. Three nights in or around Jávea or Dénia in the north — day trips to Altea, a boat trip to the sea caves, the Montgó hike — then drive south to Alicante for three nights with the city, Elche, and Guardamar’s pine-backed beaches within reach. This structure gives you both faces of the Costa Blanca without feeling rushed.
For two weeks: You have time to slow down and actually live here a little — which is when the real magic begins. Rent an apartment or villa rather than a hotel. Shop at the local market. Find your bar. Explore the inland villages on a weekday when the tourist coaches aren’t there. Do the Peñón de Ifac early on a Tuesday morning. Drive up to Alcoi for a day. Eat lunch somewhere with no English on the menu and point at what the table next to you is having. This is the two-week itinerary I’d give to anyone I actually cared about.
For themed itineraries — family trips, foodie routes, hiking holidays, cultural circuits, and more — our Costa Blanca Itineraries – How to Plan the Perfect Trip gives you a structured starting point for every kind of trip.
Shopping: Markets, Crafts & Things Worth Bringing Home
Shops are fine. Markets are where life happens.
The mercadillo — weekly open-air market — is a Costa Blanca institution, and as someone who has been attending them for years, I can tell you that no supermarket run, no matter how efficient, compares to the experience of buying tomatoes from a man who grew them in his huerta, olives cured by a woman whose family has been doing it the same way for three generations, and a pair of canvas espadrilles (alpargatas) from a stall that has sold nothing but espadrilles since before you were born.
Almost every town has its market day. Dénia on Monday. Benissa on Monday. El Campello on Tuesday. Benidorm on Wednesday and Sunday. Calp on Thursday. The enormous Thursday market at Torrevieja, which sprawls across several streets and requires a strategy to navigate properly. The Saturday market in Orihuela. The Rastro antiques market in Alicante on Sunday mornings, where you can spend two hours finding nothing useful and have a wonderful time doing it.
Beyond the markets, there are specific products worth seeking out as things to take home. Turron from Jijona — the soft, almond-based confection that is distinct from the hard Alicante-style turrón and has been made in the same small city in the mountains behind the coast for centuries. Locally produced olive oil, particularly from the cooperatives around Callosa d’en Sarrià and the Jalón Valley — bring an empty bag and fill it. Ceramic work from the Agost pottery tradition — the unglazed terracotta botijos (water vessels) that keep water cool through evaporation are both beautiful and functional. Espadrilles. Local wines from the Alicante DO. Saffron from the inland markets. Artisan soaps scented with locally grown herbs.
The coastal towns also have their share of proper artisan shops — particularly in Altea’s old quarter, where galleries and craft studios have clustered over the decades among the whitewashed alleyways. You’ll find ceramics, jewellery, paintings, and textile work of genuine quality here, made by people who actually live in the village rather than imported for tourist consumption.
For a complete guide to where to shop, what to buy, and which markets are worth the journey, our Shopping on the Costa Blanca – Markets, Malls & Local Crafts covers the full picture.
Costa Blanca for Every Traveller
One of the things I genuinely love about this region — and I say this having watched it welcome an enormous diversity of visitors over the years — is that it has an almost uncanny ability to be different things to different people without losing its essential character.
Families find the infrastructure here exceptional. The shallow, calm waters of many southern beaches are ideal for young children. The large resort hotels of Benidorm and Orihuela Costa offer entertainment, pools, and childcare facilities that take the logistical pressure off parents. Water parks, dolphin shows at Mundomar, the Terra Mítica theme park near Benidorm, the Coves de Sant Josep — there is no shortage of things to keep younger travellers engaged and delighted.
Couples — whether on a romantic first trip or a long-overdue escape — will find the northern Costa Blanca particularly accommodating. A boutique hotel in Altea’s old quarter, a candlelit dinner on a terrace above the sea in Jávea, a boat trip to a hidden cove accessible only from the water, an evening in one of the small jazz bars that operate in Dénia’s old town. The landscape and the pace lend themselves to the kind of unhurried attention that good relationships require.
Solo travellers tend to find the Costa Blanca more welcoming than they might expect. The expat community — substantial, well-established, and generally friendly in the way that people who’ve all made the same somewhat unusual life choice tend to be — means there are social networks and events accessible to newcomers. The larger towns have hostels and social accommodation. The bar culture, where sitting alone at the counter with a glass of wine is entirely normal and often leads to conversation, suits solo exploration well.
LGBTQ+ travellers will find Benidorm particularly welcoming — it has a well-established and lively LGBTQ+ scene centred around the Calle Gerona area, and the overall atmosphere in the larger towns is tolerant and inclusive. Alicante has a growing LGBTQ+ bar and events scene. The region as a whole is, in my experience, relaxed and non-judgmental about most things.
Retirees and longer-stay visitors — and there are tens of thousands of them, predominantly British, German, and Scandinavian, who have made this their permanent or semi-permanent home — find the Costa Blanca offers a quality of life that is frankly difficult to match in Northern Europe. The climate, the healthcare (the Hospital Marina Salud in Dénia is excellent), the cost of living relative to the UK, the community infrastructure, the ease of flying home — all of it adds up to a place where retirement feels less like withdrawal from life and more like an upgrade.
Digital nomads and remote workers are an increasingly significant presence, particularly in the larger towns and in Alicante city, which has invested in its tech and startup ecosystem. Co-working spaces have multiplied across the region. The combination of good infrastructure, reliable internet, affordable living costs, 300 days of sunshine, and the ability to swim at lunchtime makes a compelling case for anyone whose laptop is their office.
Our Costa Blanca for Every Traveller – Tailored Travel Guides provides dedicated guidance for each of these traveller types, with specific recommendations drawn from real local knowledge.
Photography & Instagram-Worthy Spots: The Visuals of the Costa Blanca
I’ll confess that I have a slightly complicated relationship with the Instagram-ification of travel — there are spots along this coastline that I watched transform from quiet local secrets into queued-for, hashtag-saturated photo opportunities within the space of a few years, and some of that transformation has been, to put it diplomatically, at the expense of the experience itself.
That said: the Costa Blanca is a genuinely, almost unreasonably photogenic place, and there’s no point pretending otherwise. The light alone — that particular quality of Mediterranean luminosity that bounces off white walls and limestone cliffs and the surface of the sea — does half the work for you.
The blue-domed church of Altea old town, framed between bougainvillea-draped walls, is probably the single most reproduced image of the Costa Blanca Norte. Go at dawn, before the day-trippers arrive, and you’ll understand why it became iconic. The Peñón de Ifac reflected in the calm water of Calp’s bay at sunrise is another genuinely extraordinary image — I’ve photographed it dozens of times and it hasn’t got old.
The Cala Granadella near Jávea — that hidden cove of turquoise water surrounded by pine-forested cliffs — photographs like something from the Greek islands. The approach path through the pines, with glimpses of turquoise below, is itself worth the walk. La Laguna Rosa at Torrevieja on a calm winter morning, with flamingos wading in pink water under a pale blue sky, produces images that people reliably don’t believe are real until they’ve stood there themselves.
In Alicante, the view from the Castillo de Santa Bárbara looking down over the Playa del Postiguet and the city’s white rooftops at golden hour is the kind of image that makes people book flights. The Explanada de España’s wave-patterned marble floor, photographed from street level looking towards the palm trees and the port, has an elegance that holds up beautifully.
Inland, the white village of Guadalest perched on its improbable rock above the turquoise reservoir, the almond blossom valleys in February, the terraced orange groves of the Jalón Valley catching the low winter sun — these are images of the Costa Blanca that most visitors never see, which is exactly why I think they’re worth seeking out.
For a complete guide to the region’s most photogenic locations, including practical advice on timing, positioning, and the less-visited spots that reward the effort, our Costa Blanca Photography Guide – Most Instagrammable Spots is the place to go.
A Final Word From Someone Who Lives Here
I started this guide with a memory of an October morning in Altea — coffee, cobblestones, a sleeping cat, a silver sea. I want to end with something equally specific, because the Costa Blanca deserves specificity. It deserves to be seen clearly, in its full complexity and variety, rather than reduced to a brand or a postcard or a package holiday category.
This is a place where a Roman road runs beneath a motorway. Where the same hillside that grows almonds in February grows grapes in September. Where a fishing village became a skyscraper city within a generation and somehow kept its old-town streets intact. Where schoolchildren in medieval warrior costumes fire musket volleys down narrow streets every April with expressions of absolute seriousness. Where the best meal you’ll eat this year might cost you twelve euros at a table with a paper tablecloth, and where the man who cooked it will be genuinely hurt if you don’t finish it.
I’ve seen people come here for a week and leave thirty years later. I’ve seen people arrive for retirement and discover, to their surprise, that they feel more alive here than they have in decades. I’ve seen the region change — some of it for better, some of it in ways I’d reverse if I could — and I’ve watched its essential character persist through all of it, rooted in the land and the seasons and the people who have lived here since before anyone thought to put a name on the coastline.
This Costa Blanca travel guide is the beginning of the story, not the end of it. Use the links throughout this article to go deeper into whatever calls to you — the beaches, the food, the history, the festivals, the hidden corners of the inland mountains. Come with curiosity and a willingness to go slightly off-script. Learn five words of Spanish and use them every day. Eat the gambas head and all.
And if you end up staying longer than you planned — perhaps our Expat Guide to Living on the Costa Blanca will help you!
Don’t say I didn’t warn you if you succumb to the charms of this beautiful part of Spain.
Explore the Costa Blanca in depth through our complete network of guides, each written with the same local knowledge and genuine enthusiasm as this introduction. Your perfect trip starts here.
Last updated: May 2026