The name itself is a clue to the town's long life. Requena comes from the Arabic rakka'na, meaning 'strong,' and strength is exactly what this rocky perch on the western edge of Valencia province offered. Iberians founded a settlement here in the seventh century BCE; Romans occupied it after them; and during the Moorish centuries it belonged to the Muslim kingdom of Valencia. Each of those peoples wanted the same thing - a defensible height commanding the roads between the coast and the Castilian interior. The citadel of the Moors still dominates the skyline, and stretches of the original town walls survive, along with three ancient parish churches, layered proof of every era that held the rock.

The heart of old Requena is the Barrio de la Villa, also called Requena Medieval, the former Muslim quarter still wrapped in the surviving remnants of its medieval wall. It is a compact, atmospheric maze, easily explored on foot, where the Torre del Homenaje - the keep of the castle - rises above tiled roofs and the church of Santa María anchors a quiet square. The scale is human and the stone is old; this is the kind of place where the centuries feel stacked one atop another, and where a short walk carries you past Islamic, medieval and Renaissance work without ever leaving the neighbourhood.

Requena's fortunes have twice been tied to a single trade. In the Middle Ages the town grew wealthy on silk, its looms feeding a luxury market across Spain and beyond. When the silk economy collapsed in the nineteenth century, Requena did not fade - it changed crops. The surrounding hills, high and dry, turned out to be superb country for vines, and the town rebuilt its prosperity on wine, a reputation it holds to this day. That reinvention is written into the grand houses of the old centre, some built by silk money, later inhabited by wine money, still standing as the trades that raised them came and went.

Today Requena, together with neighbouring Utiel, gives its name to the Requena-Utiel Denominación de Origen, one of Spain's protected wine regions. Its signature is the Bobal, a deep, robust red grape native to the area that makes up nearly 80 percent of production. The reds are the region's pride, but since the early 2000s the district has also earned praise for sparkling whites and rosados. You can taste the whole story at the Museo del Vino, housed in the Palacio del Cid in the heart of town - a fitting home for a museum in a place where wine is less an industry than an identity. Walk the surrounding countryside and the vines run to the horizon, a working landscape that has fed the town's cellars for generations and turned Requena's name into a byword for the robust reds of Spain's high interior.

Inland and high, Requena eats differently from the seafood-loving coast. The cooking here leans toward meat and the traditions of neighbouring Castile-La Mancha: gazpacho manchego, a warm bread-and-meat stew that shares only a name with the cold Andalusian soup; morteruelo, a rich paté thickened with breadcrumbs; and a wide range of cured sausages. Beyond the town, the countryside rewards walkers and cyclists with marked trails, and near Requena lie the sulphurous springs of Fuentepodrida. It is a landscape that asks to be taken slowly - a glass of Bobal, a plate of embutidos, and a long view over the vines.