Basilica of Santa Maria, Alicante

Basilica of Santa Maria, Alicante tickets: which one to buy

Entry is free with a donation box; there is no ticket and no guided tour service. The basilica is in the old quarter at the foot of the castle hill, five minutes from the Explanada and the port, so no transport is needed. Walking tours of Alicante include the basilica and cost a moderate amount, usually adding the town hall, the Santa Cruz quarter and the lift up to the Santa Barbara castle, which is itself free to enter with a small charge for the lift.

Nothing needs booking. The church closes between morning and evening services, which are the fixed points of its day, and the surrounding lanes of the Barrio are the nightlife district, so the area changes character completely after dark. The parish keeps its hours on a handwritten notice by the door and they change for local festivals.

Visiting Basilica of Santa Maria, Alicante: what to see

Santa Maria is the oldest church still in use in Alicante, built between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries over the main mosque of the Muslim town, whose walls were partly reused. It is Valencian Gothic: a single wide nave with six chapels set between the buttresses, a form developed in this region so that churches could be built quickly and cheaply after the reconquest. The two asymmetrical towers were added later, and the main doorway is a baroque explosion of 1724 by Juan Bautista Borja, with a Virgin in a niche above it, entirely out of keeping with the plain Gothic body behind.

Inside are a rococo high altar, an organ of 1653 and a font in which the composer Oscar Espla was baptised. The Holy See raised the church to basilica rank in 2007. The two towers are unequal because the second was built two centuries after the first, and the belfry holds a clock given by the city in the eighteenth century. The chapel of the Communion, added in the eighteenth century, is an oval rococo room in coloured marble that sits oddly against the Gothic nave beside it.

Basilica of Santa Maria, Alicante opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily in two sessions, morning and late afternoon into the evening, with the middle of the day closed; hours shift with the season. Alicante is hot from June to September and the stone interior is cool. The Hogueras de San Juan in late June fill the city with bonfires and the church with processions. The lanes around it are steep and stepped.

Dress modestly, which in a beach city means covering swimwear. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow twenty minutes. The castle above, reached by a lift cut into the rock from the seafront, gives the view over the bay and takes another hour. The Santa Cruz quarter above the church is whitewashed and hung with flowers and is at its best in the early evening.