A Coruña

Exit the Tower park by the southwest gate and pick up the Paseo Marítimo — one of the longest continuous seafront promenades in Europe — heading south with the ocean on your right the whole way. You'll pass the curved sail-shaped facade of the Domus museum (no need to go in) and a long sequence of cliff-edge benches before the Paseo curves into the urban half-moon of Riazor. Walk the full length of the beach on the sand if the tide is out; the surf school and the Deportivo stadium frame the southern end.

Tip: Walk on the seaward pavement, not the inland one — the inland side runs alongside four lanes of traffic and you lose the whole point of the route. Just before reaching Riazor, the free outdoor terrace at the back of the Aquarium Finisterrae gives you the only angle where you can frame the Tower of Hercules behind you and the Riazor crescent ahead in a single shot.

Cut inland from Riazor along Calle Juan Flórez — ten minutes east through the city's main shopping spine — and you'll arrive at the stone arches of San Agustín, the working food market of A Coruña since 1932. Skip the upstairs tourist stalls and go straight to the ground-floor fish counters, where the percebes and centollo come off the boat the same morning. A plate of pulpo a feira runs €12-14, a wedge of empanada gallega de zamburiñas (scallop empanada) is €3.50, and a glass of crisp Albariño €2.50 — eat standing at a counter, the way every local does at lunch.

Tip: Most fish counters partner with an adjacent bar — point at what you want raw, and they'll send it to be steamed or grilled for €3-5. This is the only way locals eat market lunch and it's invisible to anyone who hasn't been told. Avoid the sit-down restaurants on the upper gallery — same fish, double the price, and the kitchen is the same one downstairs.

Leave the market by the east door, walk three minutes along Calle San Andrés and you spill into Plaza de María Pita — the city's grand arcaded square, named for the local woman who in 1589 grabbed a fallen English standard and rallied the defense against Francis Drake. Cross the square diagonally and enter the old town via Calle de la Estrella rather than the obvious Calle Real: it opens onto the lemon-shaded Plaza de Azcárraga and the Romanesque church of Santiago (12th c.), the oldest in the city. From there a five-minute climb through Calle Damas brings you out at the bastion of Jardín de San Carlos, a sunken cypress-walled garden built around the tomb of British general Sir John Moore.

Tip: The mid-afternoon hour is deliberate — the old town is empty between 14:30 and 17:00 because the Spanish are still at lunch. Enter the church of Santiago through the lateral north door, not the locked west portal everyone tries first; it's quietly open on weekday afternoons until 18:00 and the interior carved capitals are the real Romanesque treasure, not the facade.

Walk one block south from Plaza de María Pita to Avenida de la Marina — under a minute — and the full 700-metre wall of white-framed glass balconies opens in front of you. These are the galerías that earned A Coruña its nickname "the city of glass": 19th-century wooden bay windows fitted to face the harbour wind. Walk the harbour-side promenade north to south for the unbroken view, then continue another 700 metres to the squat octagonal Castillo de San Antón on its own islet — the 16th-century sea fortress that locked the bay against pirates. The exterior loop around the moat is the photo; you don't need to go inside.

Tip: The galerías face east, so contrary to expectations sunset is the wrong hour — at full sunset they're in shadow. The window is 17:00-18:30 in summer (15:30-16:30 winter), when the side-light from the west still catches the white wood frames and makes them pop against deep blue sky. Stand on the harbour-side bench across from Hotel Maycar to get the entire glass wall in one unbroken frame — every other angle clips it.

Walk back up to Plaza de María Pita — two minutes — and La Penela is under the arcade at number 12, the local stronghold of the square since the 1970s. This is where Coruñeses bring visiting relatives: tortilla de Betanzos (€14, the regional version, served deliberately runny in the middle — that's correct, not undercooked), pulpo a feira with pimentón and Galician sea salt (€18), and percebes when in season from September to May at €25 per 100g. Order a bottle of cold Albariño from Rías Baixas (€18-22), finish with tarta de Santiago. Plan around €40-50 per person.

Tip: Tourist-trap warning for the square: ignore the restaurants on Plaza de María Pita with photo menus, plastic-laminated signs and waiters chasing you down the arcade — they are frozen-seafood mills charging €28 for thawed pulpo. La Penela doesn't hustle outside; the door is unmarked except by a small sign. Walk in without reservation before 21:00 and you'll seat in 5 minutes; after 21:30 expect 30. If percebes are off the menu, the kitchen won't substitute frozen — that refusal is itself the sign you're in the right place.

Leave María Pita through the stone arch at its north-east corner — ten paces in, the noise drops away and you are inside the medieval Ciudad Vieja. Walk uphill to the Romanesque Colegiata de Santa María del Campo, the old fishermen's parish, then finish on the cypress-shaded ramparts of the Jardín de San Carlos, where 19th-century British general Sir John Moore lies buried in a tomb turned to face the harbour. The garden is built on a former gunpowder bastion: every bench looks down on the port those guns once defended.

Tip: Photograph the Jardín de San Carlos from the upper terrace looking south-east — you frame the cypresses, Moore's tomb, and the harbour cranes in one diagonal. Coruñeses come here at 11:00 to read the paper; tour groups never make it this far inside the old town.

Walk five minutes south-west out of the old town along Calle Real, and you arrive at the wood-and-tile front of A Pulpeira de Melide on Cantón Grande — the address where coruñeses send anyone serious about pulpo a feira. The dish is non-negotiable: a wooden plate of octopus (€15-18) boiled tender by the pulpeira at the front window, dusted with paprika, drowned in green Galician olive oil and served over smoky cachelos potatoes (€4). Pair it with cold Ribeiro white in a ceramic cuncha (€2.50), exactly as it has been drunk here for four hundred years.

Tip: Arrive at 12:30 sharp, not 13:30 — by 13:15 the queue is out the door. Order the media ración of pulpo (€12) plus a slice of empanada de zorza (€4) rather than a full plate: it leaves room to also try the percebes — goose barnacles — if she has them that day, which is the other dish Galicia is built on.

Walk three minutes north-east from lunch and you are on the Avenida de la Marina — the half-kilometre curtain of white-painted glazed galleries that earned A Coruña the name Cidade de Cristal. Mid-afternoon is the deliberate hour: the sun has swung south-west, hits the glass head-on, and the entire façade lights up like a sheet of broken sugar. Cross to the port side of Cantón Grande, walk the full length, then turn back along the arcade — only from below do you see how the wooden window frames are different on every single building.

Tip: Photograph the galleries from the small roundabout in front of the post office at the corner of Cantón Grande and Calle Real — the curve of the avenue is at its most dramatic from there, and the modernist gas lamps lead the eye perfectly. Ignore the 'free polaroid' photographers near the harbour railing — they demand €20 once the photo is taken.

Take bus 3 or 3A from Cantón Grande (8 minutes) — or, if you have the legs, walk the dramatic 2.5 km north along the Paseo Marítimo past the cliffs of Punta Herminia. The Tower of Hercules is the only Roman lighthouse on Earth still doing the job — 1,900 years old, UNESCO listed, and has lit Atlantic storms since the reign of Trajan. Pay €3, climb the 234 steps, and step onto the lantern terrace as the late-afternoon sun turns the granite and the Sculpture Park below into copper.

Tip: Aim to be on the lantern at 17:30 in summer or 16:30 in winter — that is the precise window when the sun hits the lighthouse from the west and the tower's own shadow falls dramatically eastward across the headland. Skip the indoor museum at the base; instead walk the cliff loop behind the tower, where the Atlantic crashes into the Menhirs sculpture and almost no one walks.

Bus 3A back into town (or a €7 taxi) and walk ten minutes west to Calle Novoa Santos 15 — the discreet door of Casa Pardo, A Coruña's most respected white-tablecloth seafood house, three generations deep and where coruñeses bring their in-laws. The kitchen owns the percebes (goose barnacles, €18 ración — the dish that defines Galician seafood) and the rodaballo a la plancha (grilled wild turbot, €38) pulled that morning from the Costa da Morte. Budget €50-65 per head with a glass of Albariño; the dining room is small, formal but warm, and you will hear Galician at three of the six tables.

Tip: Reserve 48 hours ahead — six tables, and no walk-ins on a Saturday night. Skip the printed menu: ask the waiter what came in from the lonja (fish market) that morning, the way every regular here orders. Tourist-trap warning: the all-night 'seafood paella' joints on nearby Calle Estrella are bagged-frozen, microwave-finished tourist menus at €40 — no coruñés will set foot on those terraces.