Waiting to be discovered: Jaen is a pretty Andalucian enclave that offers endless opportunities to eat well

The cathedral, one of its top attractions, dominates the medieval Old Town, dwarfing the surroundings and inspiring awe in its inhabitants. You'll also find impressive Renaissance palacios, churches and convents in the surrounding cobbled streets.

Jaen's other big draw is the 16th century Palacio de Villardompardo, which houses both an impressive collection of naive and primitive art and a near-complete 11th-century Moorish baths.

Tucked away on a small, picturesque plaza high up in the Old Town, the Palacio's galleries house more than 400 striking paintings and sculptures, mostly by local Spanish artists from the 19th century onwards. The basement displays the excavated remains of the baths' ante-rooms. A grand Moorish horseshoe arch marks the entrance to the main baths, a large central hall with hot and cold rooms, each with its own entrance arch and star-shaped skylights twinkling through domed ceilings.

Equally historic is the 13th century Arab Castillo de Santa Catalina, where we stayed. It is now a parador  - one of the state-owned luxury hotels housed in castles and palaces across Spain. It stands on a plateau and offers breathtaking views, so it's easy to see why the Moors commandeered this site; it's exactly the kind of vantage point you'd want to guard against invaders.

Jaen Cathedral - a Renaissance masterpiece, predominantly built in the 16th and 17th centuries - towers over the city

Dinner was served in the lofty dining room which, with its vaulted ceiling, iron chandeliers and heraldic shields, had more than a touch of the medieval. The service was formal, but the food had moved with the times. We started off with pipirrana - a piquant local speciality midway between a salad and a gazpacho. After salmon mozarabe, a salty-sweet, Arab-influenced dish of seared salmon in a sauce of apples, soft dried apricots and raisins, came tocinillo de cielo -  a light sponge cake. By this time, the day's activities (not to mention the full-bodied vino tinto) had left us ready for bed.

The next morning, we could have taken the two-hour journey to Cordoba or walked in the surrounding sierras, but the parador's pool and scenic terrace proved too tempting. We did manage to drag ourselves away in the evening for tapas back down the hill in the Old Town. There, most of the city's best bars are concentrated around the warren of narrow streets behind the cathedral, the most famous of which is El Gorrion (The Sparrow). Opened in 1888, this tiny bar with Greco Roman columns and honky-tonk piano is a wonderful mix of fin de siecle decadence, locals' hang-out and Wild West saloon.

We glugged a glass of 25-year-old vino tinto, served straight from a wooden barrel. A bargain at £2.70, the warm, treacly sherry-like wine came with a complimentary serving of home-made cinnamon-laden black pudding, a montadito of mackerel (literally, 'mounted' on a small piece of baguette) and a dish of fresh local olives.

This is how tapas were originally served and you could easily spend an evening bar-hopping and being fed without having to pay for a single dish. Nevertheless, we decided to make the most of the balmy autumn weather and settled down at a pavement cafe in the 19th-century Plaza del Posito.

Jaen might lack the razzmatazz of some of its more celebrated Andalucian neighbours, but if you fancy quality fare and a glimpse of Spain's heritage without the crowds, this is the place.

As seen in dailymail.co.uk