A short, mostly gentle stage across Murcia. Cartagena was founded by the Carthaginians as Qart Hadasht in the third century BC and became Carthago Nova under Rome, and its Roman theatre still sits in the middle of the modern city. The road inland climbs almost imperceptibly to around 600 metres, then descends for the final 25 km into Lorca, a town beneath a large medieval castle. Under 1,000 metres of climbing across the day and a downhill approach make this another of the diminishing number of chances for the sprinters, before the race turns into the mountains of Andalusia.