Monuments to visit Granada

The visit of the Nasrid palaces, located in the Alhambra, begins with the Mexuar (pronounced «méchouar»). All judicial problems were discussed there. This is the most altered part of the arrival of Christians. The Mexuar room, converted into a chapel in 1629, has a mix of styles. The. and the Albaicín have a beautiful view of the. and the Albaicín. By crossing the patio of the Mexuar, you can see on the left, the Cuarto Dorado (or golden room) and, on the right, one of the nicest façades of the palace of Comares. This palace surrounds the patio of Los (or Cour), one of the jewels of the Alhambra. On the right, at the entrance, stands the palace of Charles Quint and, on the left, the tower of Comares, the tallest of the Alhambra (45 m). Before entering the tower, you pass through the Salle room (from Arabic baraka, "luck"). The ceiling, destroyed by a fire in 1890, was restored faithfully with cedar wood. It was the lobby of the Ambassadors'Lobby, where foreign emissaries were received. The walls, measuring nearly 20 m high, are covered with decorations and inscriptions. Then on the patio of los Leónes (Cour des Lions), which was the centre of the area reserved for family life. Exactly 124 columns, open like palm trees, decorate the patio. It would represent Paradise, bathed by four rivers. The twelve lions symboliseraient the signs of the Zodiac. On the right, you can find the sala de los Abencerrajes (Salle room).
According to legend, members of a noble family were beheaded one by one. Their blood would have given the water from the central fountain its reddish colour… On the bottom, you can observe beautiful paintings on leather in the sala de los Reyes (room of Kings). They were made in the th century by Christians in Seville. In front of the Abencérages hall, the Sala de las Dos Hermanas (the Two Sisters room) owes its name to the two marble tiles surrounding the fountain. She was probably inhabited by sultana, official wives and their children.
To go to the Generalife, you can cross the Jardins gardens. They were occupied by the houses of the soldiers and servants of the palace. Following the towers of the wall, you will notice the torre de la Cautiva (Tour tower), which was locked by Isabelle de Solis, a Christian whose father Muley Hacen fell in love with. The torre del Agua (water tower) passed the aqueduct that supplied the gardens. It was by the The Torre Suelos (tower of the Seven Soils) that Boabdil came out for the last time of the Alhambra. According to his will, the door has been condemned and since then nobody has crossed it.

This is the purely military part of the Alhambra. It dates from the th century. There is the place of weapons. The houses and barracks of the soldiers were there. You can see only the traces of the pieces, delimited by small walls. On the left you will see the Jardin garden with its cypress trees, flowers and many fountains. the painter Fortuny came to spend his afternoon. The tower of the Vela or the Campana (the Catholic Kings made it a bell to tell the peasants the time of watering the fields) offers a splendid view of the city, but also on the peaks of the Sierra Nevada.

It contrasts with the rest of buildings by its massive aspect. This 60 m block block houses one of the finest Renaissance patios in Spain, the work of the Tolédan Pedro Machuca, disciple of Michelangelo. Very sober, with its double colonnade (doric downstairs, ionic at the top), this round patio has a diameter of 30 m. The Charles V palace houses the museum of the Alhambra and the Museum of Fine Arts. 

In the street of the Royal Chapel, it is a baroque building with patio with Tuscan columns; initially, he served as an Islamic university, still possessing a dependency in mudéjar style (th century), the oratory of the original madraza.

This th century palace has been transferred to the Albacín since the placeta de las Descalzas (in the city centre), welcomes the municipal archives.

After eight years of closure, six years of work, this museum has just opened its doors in May 2018. This required an investment of € 640 000 from the Spanish Ministry of Culture and the Andalusia junta. Located in the House of Castril, a renaissance palace of the sixteenth century, it proposes to show the daily life of the various societies that inhabited Granada. Through three rooms and a patio, a course is proposed at a semi-permanent exhibition presenting nearly 120 pieces constituting the "treasure" of this museum. This will include the tooth of Orce, a tooth that belonged to a child born more than 1.4 million years ago, making it the oldest human being found in Europe. Starting from this object, we will go back to the fifteenth century to reach the astrolabe of Ibn Zawel, dating back to 1481. An instrument of navigation which in the Muslim world was also used to exercise religious practice by allowing to know exactly the hours of prayer, the beginning of Ramadan or the appropriate position to pray towards Mecca. To note, a very nice view on the Alhambra from the patio.

Dating from the 11th century, these Moorish baths are among the oldest and best preserved in Spain and constitute one of the oldest structures in Muslim Granada. They consist of several rooms reproducing the layout of Roman baths: entrance courtyard, vestibule, cold room, central room, and hot room. The vaults with octagonal star-shaped dormers and the arcades of the last rooms, which are decorated with Roman, Visigoth or Caliphate capitals, are noteworthy.

This old caravanserai nasrid of the 14th century (the only preserved caravanserai of Spain), with its typical entrance and its balconies on two floors, now hosts some of domiciliations festivals and events of Granada, including the summers flamencos! After the Reconquista, this inn for merchants who come to do trade in the bazaar was converted into a theatre where the Lope De Vega playwright, himself, avenue, before being converted into a courtyard for food vendors, hence its current name!

The current building of the town hall is located on the former convent of the carmen of Granada. A 16th and 17th century convent organized around two cloisters, the new and the old, the church being leaning against the new cloister on the northeast side. Their destruction after the defamation of Mendizábal, a process of secularization of the church's property in the 19th century, created the current space of Plaza del Carmen. Of the old building, only the new cloister remains, inside the town hall. You cannot visit it, at most you can take a look at it by going to the city's tourist office, located on the ground floor of the town hall. It is the daily starting point for many tapeo tours to Calle Navas and its surroundings, and is also the site of many demonstrations, protests and celebrations, since the arrival of the New Year is celebrated there, for example, with all the necessary grapes, cotillion and fireworks.

Here is another monument that will serve as a landmark for your strolls in Granada since it is nearby that you take the bus to go to the Realejo or the Alhambra and that it is at the junction of the two most important and most commercial streets of the city. Created in 1892 by the Valencian sculptor Mariano Benlliure, one of the most important sculptors of that time, with the aim of commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Americas. Illustrating one of the most important moments in the history of Spain, this monument consists of a two-metre sculpture of Isabella the Catholic, sitting on a beautiful Gothic chair, and another two-metre sculpture, that of Christopher Columbus, kneeling to submit his projects to the Queen before embarking on his journey to India. Made of bronze by the "lost wax" system, this set is placed on a pedestal made of Sierra Elvira stones.