[more prefabbed travel guff no one wants. See how I can write in a style I really don't like]

Pick an Andalusian town, any Andalusian town. Given luck, you’ll find a crumbling Moorish castle, a crop of wonderful churches, some palaces, patios, the last trappings of mediaeval Christianity and more bars than can possibly be sustained by anything other than the inhabitants’ impressive commitment to the good things in life.

Luckier still and it will be Carmona casually ticking off the checklist and asking if you’d like fries. A romantically derelict Alcazar, a flush of fine churches, a shady main square, bars, restaurants and a handful of hotels are all here, but what makes Carmona special is the box-set succession from Neolithic remains, through Carthaginian, Roman, Moorish, and Renaissance styles, right through to the mouldering art nouveau of the Cerezo Theatre.

Arriving at siesta time, there’s little to do but wander the streets and wait for the town to open like a jetlagged flower; it’s the kind of sleeping beauty Andalusia does so well, away from the crowded coasts and cities – a music box tinkle to Seville’s brassy blare. Even by local standards (nearby Écija is another outcrop of perfection on the dusty plain), this small town is crammed with unregarded masterpieces alongside the picturesque decay of a thousand years of housing stock. As everywhere in the province, ancient churches are scarred with the blocked doorways and windows of social and ecclesiastical change – patches on patches, mortar on rubble. There’s quiet splendour in the delicate plasterwork on the library, the palatial houses in the centre of town, the domes and courtyards, and the shapes and textures of innumerable balconies and doors.

A fair walk outside the town walls through the colossal Puerta de Sevilla is the Necropolis, where, in the late 19th century, hundreds of burials of the more well-to-do citizens of Roman Carmo were uncovered. It’s a little spooky descending into a mausoleum in the silence of off-season solitude, starting at the scuttle of a lizard and checking nervously over your shoulder. While none of the tombs offer any Tutankhamun moments, this is an atmospheric place, and a surprising glimpse of just what a substantial town this was in the days when Baetica was one of the richest provinces in the Empire. Further Roman survivals are the amphitheatre across the road and, in the old town, the restored Puerta de Cordoba where the city walls spill on to the broad plain, now, as when first built, awash with grain.

Skipping forward a few hundred years, the Alcazar is as uncompromising a pile as you’ll find, though part-transformed into an elegant parador (with prices to match), looking out across the plain with well-heeled grace. This kind of reinterpretation is nothing new, as the town’s Mudéjar belltowers show – here, as elsewhere, the Reconquest subsumed and transformed, working on anything but a blank slate. San Pedro’s Giralda-Lite form and the convents of Santa Maria de Gracia and the Convento de las Descalzas (a beauty and the beast pairing) are highlights, but there are too many churches in the town for anything other than bewilderment at past social priorities. Also worth looking out for is the Iglesia del Salvador, its tower seemingly snapped off like a cone under the weight of the ice cream dome. It was never finished.

On the secular side, the old town’s main plaza is surrounded by elegant buildings, with the disintegrating Moorish Revival façade of Bar Goya the standout – and the food’s not bad either. Most of the bars serve up a blackboard of Andaluz favourites; so far from the ports, land wins out over sea, and ham, grilled pork and pulses are to the fore. This time of day it’s strictly for tourists. The locals are elsewhere: perhaps in Bodega Jose Mari (opposite the market square) where fragments of Roman columns support the doorway and a rough chalk scrawl proudly proclaims the first of the year’s mosto. Sadly, before I have time to sample more than a glass or two of what’s on offer, it’s time for the bus back to the city. Though, Seville being Seville, that’s not such a hardship.