You walk Cadaqués looking at the ground, and not by chance. The old town's streets are paved with slate slabs set on edge, laid herringbone-style, forming a pattern that repeats street after street. It's called the rastell. It's not decoration, and it's not a town-council whim: every one of those details solves a problem for a village on a slope, by the sea, with a lot of wind. It's one of those things that, once explained, you can never stop noticing.
Stone on edge, herringbone
The village is a maze of narrow alleys paved with sea-eroded slate, set vertically in a herringbone pattern — opus spicatum, the same name the Romans gave that bond. The technique is designed for two specific things: preventing slips and helping rainwater drain away.
Setting the stone on edge rather than flat is what gives the grip: your foot lands on hundreds of edges instead of a smooth surface. And the herringbone pattern keeps water from rushing straight down and sweeping everything with it, spreading it out instead. In a village of sloped streets running down to the sea, that's the difference between a street and a slide.
The slate that's everywhere
Grey slate isn't only underfoot. Cadaqués's characteristic look is shaped by a handful of repeating elements: the grey slate, the olive trees and green scrub, the beautifully precise pedra seca terraces, and, above all, the white houses.
It's a village built almost entirely from what was at hand. The stone underfoot, in the terraces, and in the walls is the same stone that forms the mountain behind it. That's why it all fits together so well: nobody brought anything in. The old town, with its narrow, steep streets and alleys and its tucked-away little squares, is protected as a historic ensemble.
And the white
The white houses are the other half of the picture. Whitewashing is the age-old Mediterranean solution: it reflects the sun and keeps the house cooler, the lime disinfects and protects the wall, and it's cheap. Applied across a whole village of narrow streets, it produces that bounced-light effect that has drawn painters here for more than a century.
The contrast between the white of the walls and the lead-grey of the slate underfoot and in the terracing is, literally, Cadaqués's colour palette. You don't need to be a painter to notice it; just walk the village at seven in the evening on a clear day.
How to walk it
Practical, unromantic advice: shoes with soles. The rastell grips well when dry and considerably less well when wet, and the old town's slopes are the real thing. No smooth soles, no heels.
And less practical advice: climb with no destination. Cadaqués's streets don't lead anywhere in particular, they tangle and double back, and that's part of the design of a village that grew wherever it could. For anyone spending a few days here, losing an afternoon in the upper alleys beats almost anything you could book.