Granada, Spain Travel Guide - What To See & Do In 2012
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Museo San Juan de Dios, C/ Convalecencia 1 (just off Plaza Nueva), ☎ +34 958 222 144, [13]. 10:00-13:30. A very rich religious art collection. €3.
The Alhambra
Court of the Myrtles, Palacios Nazaries
Official web sites at [14] and [15]. Mar-Oct every day 8:30-22:00 plus F/Sa 22:00-23:30; Oct-Mar every day 8:30-18:00 plus F/Sa 20:00-21:30 (ticket office closes one hour before attraction, evening visits to Palacios Nazaries only). €13 combo ticket for Palacios Nazaries, Alcazaba and Generalife, €7 for just the Alcazaba and Generalife, €8 for an evening visit to the Palacios Nazaries, and €5 for an evening visit to the Generalife. Palace of Charles V free.
Reservations: It is highly recommend that you book tickets to the Alhambra in advance, as the number of visitors allowed inside the Palacios Nazaries is limited and tickets tend to sell out. These can be booked online [16], by phone (+34 902 888 001), or in person at the main entrance to the Alhambra or at the Tienda de la Alhambra shop on Calle Reyes Católicos in the city centre. Note that the online and phone reservation services require a credit card (which you must bring with you to the Alhambra ticket office to pick up your tickets) and charge an extra 10% fee on top of the cost of admission. Several hundred tickets are reserved for sale on the day but these usually require arriving early and queuing for an hour or two. The Bono card can still be available after the regular tickets have sold out. Failing that, quite a lot of the grounds are accessible without a ticket. This general caution applies to cruise ship land tours (e.g., from Malaga); failure to book Alhambra tours early (before or during cruise) may mean no tours/"buses" are available.
Note that visiting hours are split into 3 periods: morning (before 14:00), afternoon (after 14:00 to first closing time), and evening (F/Sa only). Tickets are issued for a specific period and access to monuments will not be granted outside that period. However, once inside visitors may remain until closing time. In addition, the Palacios Nazaries can only be accessed for a half-hour time window (shown on the ticket) within your visiting period. As such, it's a good idea to plan your visit around these restrictions - for example, if you have a morning ticket (before 14:00) and your Palacios Nazaries ticket is for 13:00, get to the Alhambra grounds at least a couple of hours before your appointed timeslot for Palacios Nazaries and spend it touring the Alcazaba and Generalife.
Getting there: From central Granada, the 30 and 32 minibuses offer a direct connection to the Alhambra, both picking up from the Pavaneras 1 stop (behind Plaza Isabel La Catolica) and the Gran Via 1 stop (next to the cathedral), with the 32 also offering a direct connection to the Albayzin. There's three stops for the Alhambra: Generalife (closest to the ticket office), Carlos V (closest to the Palace of Charles V) and Puerta de la Justica - fare is €1.20. A taxi from the central district (head to the stand on Plaza Nueva) will cost you around €5. On foot, you can walk up to the Alhambra from Plaza Nueva (about a 30 minute hike) by taking Cuesta de Gomerez and heading straight - the ticket office is on the far side of the grounds, near the Generalife. If coming by car from outside the city, you can bypass the historic district by taking the Ronda Sur-Alhambra exit (A-395) from the freeway and following the signs to the parking lot (€1.50/hour).
Palace of Charles V
The Alhambra: Part fortress (the Alcazaba), part palace (Palacios Nazaries), part garden (the Generalife) and part government city (the Medina), this medieval complex overlooking Granada is one of the top attractions in Spain, with many visitors coming to Granada expressly to see the Alhambra. The last Moorish stronghold in Europe, the Alhambra reflects the splendor of Moorish civilization in Andalusia and offers the visitor splendid ornamental architecture, spectacular and lush gardens, cascading and dripping water features, and breathtaking views of the city.
The Alhambra was a palace, citadel, fortress, and the home of the Nasrid sultans, high government officials, servants of the court and elite soldiers from the 13th to the 14th century. Other notable buildings belonging to a different time period are also located within the Alhambra complex, most notably the Renaissance style Palace of Charles V, which houses the Alhambra Museum (with historical artifacts from the site) and the Fine Art Museum.
But in order to fully appreciate the unique architecture of the Alhambra set within the surrounding landscape, it is advisable to see the Alhambra for afar as well as up close: several locations in the Albaizín (most notably the San Nicolás Viewpoint) or Sacromonte - both covered below - allow you the opportunity to truly admire the Alhambra's spectacular location, lying just above the city of Granada.
The Alhambra is a vast complex, composed of many structures and gardens on its lush grounds, which alone are worth exploring - it is totally free to do so and they are open nearly all hours of the day - but there are four primary attractions: the Alcazaba, the Palace of Charles V, the Palacios Nazaries and the Generalife.
Alcazaba. The ruins of a massive fortress perched atop the crest of the hill overlooking the city, this is the oldest part of the Alhambra and offers some of the finest views of anywhere in the complex, with an expansive panorama from the top of the prominent tower that gives you a spectacular view of nearly the entire city and the Sierra Nevada mountains. Within the fort's walls are the ruins of a town which once held soldier's homes and baths, though today only the outline of these rooms remain.
Palace of Charles V (Palacio de Carlos V). A more recent addition to the Alhambra, this sixteenth century building was commissioned following the Reconquista by Charles V as a royal residence close to the Alhambra palace. The square two-level structure is done in Renaissance style with an impressive circular courtyard ringed by a colonnade within. The building is also home to two museums, the Museo de la Alhambra on the lower floor with a collection of artifacts and art from the Alhambra, and the Museo de Bellas Artes, a small fine art museum on the upper floor, as well as a couple of changing museum exhibits which regularly feature art with some connection to the Alhambra.
Palacios Nazaries. The Nasrid royal palace and the primary (and thus most crowded) attraction of the Alhambra complex, the palace is an impressive, at times breathtakingly beautiful work of architecture. Visitors get to see spectacular archways and windows, carved wooden ceilings, intricate molded-plaster work and colorful ceramic tiles at nearly every turn as they meander between lovely rooms and lush courtyards. Everyone starts their tour in the Mexuar, a set of administrative rooms with a beautiful prayer room and a small square courtyard with the golden Façade of Comares, before emerging in the Court of the Myrtles, a rectangular courtyard with a long pool of water flanked on each side by a myrtle hedge (hence the name). At the end of the courtyard you can enter a room to view the twelve Lion Statues from the fountain in the Court of the Lions, which is currently undergoing renovation. Cross to the other end of the Court of the Myrtles to enter the Ship Room, with its spectacular carved wooden ceiling in the shape of an upside-down hull, and the Chamber of the Ambassadors, the palace's largest and perhaps most spectacular room, which once functioned as the throne room and features a star-studded wooden ceiling, intricately carved stucco walls and beautiful arched windows. From here you'll pass through a series of small rooms, including the Washington Irving Room, where Washington Irving wrote Tales of the Alhambra, as well as down an open-air hallway with an excellent view of an adjacent courtyard (the Court of Linda-Raja) and the Albayzín. Passing by the old bath house you'll enter the Hall of the Two Sisters, a spectacular domed room with an intricate stucco ceiling and lovely views of the Court of Linda-Raja. From here you can navigate around the edge of the Court of the Lions (currently under renovation) to the Hall of the Abencerrages, structurally similar to the Hall of the Two Sisters. At this point you can exit the palace, which will place you near the entrance to the Partal Gardens.
Generalife. The lush and gorgeous gardens of the Nasrid kings, the expansive Generalife is the finest set of Moorish style gardens in Andalusia, positioned on a hill situated at the rear of the complex overlooking th
e Alhambra palace. Within you'll find beds of colorful flowers, more exquisite architecture, leaping fountains and cool shade. There are two entrances to the Generalife, one at the ticket booth on the east side of the complex and another next to the Palacios Nazaries which will take you through the Partal Gardens, a collection of palace gardens with flowing water streams and a large pool of water which reflects a nearby portico. From the Partal you can follow the Promenade of The Towers, the remains of the main wall and its adjoining towers that separate the Alhambra palace grounds from the Generalife. As you cross a bridge over a small canyon you'll enter the Generalife proper, where you can follow a promenade past the amphitheater to the Lower Gardens, a collection of hedge rows with rectangular ponds at the center and colorful flower beds throughout. Past this is the Generalife Palace, the white structure sitting atop the hill and the highlight of a visit to the gardens, for it is within that you will find spectacular views, lovely architecture, and the much-photographed Court of the Main Canal, with its crossing jets of water that arc over the rectangular pool. Nearby is the Soultana's Court, another picturesque courtyard with leaping fountains. Above the palace are the High Gardens, where you can find a gorgeous long pergola and the Water Stairway, which true to its name is a beautiful stairway with water flowing down its parapets. The gardens are huge, but the layout is simple as everything in the Generalife can be seen along a long, circular path.
These are the four primary attractions, but the grounds hold many secondary sights as well, some of them quite splendid in their own right and many off the beaten path. If entering the Alhambra on foot from Plaza Nueva, you'll travel up Cuesta de Gomerez through the Granada Gate, an ornamental archway which marks the entrance to the grounds. From here you can continue straight into the Bosque (forest), a delightfully lush and shady wooded area in the canyon beneath the palace complex with streams running along the footpaths, fountains and statues and, in the summertime, fragrant smells from the trees. If you take the rightmost path up the hill and make a right up the next path you find, you'll come across the Bermejas Towers, an outpost of the Alhambra on the very edge of the complex, with massive square towers perched on a hill over the neighborhood of Realejo. The towers themselves are locked up and mostly in ruins, but the views of Granada and the Alhambra are splendid. If you take the leftmost path from the Granada Gate you'll travel up to the Justice Gate (Puerta de Justica), an imposing Moorish-style archway and entry that served as the primary entrance to the palace complex in days of old.
Within the main palace complex, just above the Justice Gate is a lovely courtyard area, the Square of the Cisterns (Plaza de los Aljibes) between the Alcazaba and the Palace of Charles V next to the Wine Gate (Puerta del Vino), another picturesque horseshoe-shaped archway which once protected the grounds. Continuing along the small road past the Palace of Charles V to the upper part of the palace complex, you'll come across a line of woodworking and souvenir shops, the prominent St. Mary Church, the ruins of a village and the Parador. Though most of the Parador is a restaurant and hotel, parts are still open to the public, including the lovely courtyard entryway and the ruins of a Franciscan monastery, which holds the lovely remains of a small chapel with a view into the hotel's lavish patio area.
Above the main palace complex, to the east of the Generalife, are a number of visitor facilities, namely a large parking lot. A short hike uphill from the parking lot is the Silla del Moro, the ruins of a guard outpost directly above the Generalife Palace. While it requires an uphill hike and is isolated from the rest of the grounds, the Silla offers what may be the most spectacular view in all of Granada, giving you a rare opportunity to look down at the Alhambra palace, as well as a sweeping vista of the city, the valley and the surrounding mountains, with the added benefit of not being nearly as crowded as the San Nicolas Viewpoint in the Albayzín or requiring admission like the Alcazaba.
Albayzín
Situated on a hill above the center of town and across from the Alhambra, the Albayzín (also spelled Albaicín, Alayzín, and Albaycín) is an ancient Muslim neighborhood popular with visitors - and rightly so. Among its narrow, winding streets one will find beautiful white-washed old buildings, splendid Arabic shops and restaurants, scenic gardens, and marvelous views of Granada and the Alhambra. Today part of a UNESCO World Heritage site (along with the nearby neighborhood of Sacromonte, covered below), Albayzín dates back to the fourteenth century and was built as a defensive town and thrived as one of the centers of Granada under Muslim rule.
Entering the Albayzín is simple enough - from Plaza Nueva it's just a matter of walking north (uphill), or proceeding east along the Rio Darro (to the Paseo de los Tristes, covered below) and turning north on any of the side streets. However if coming from the Cathedral or anywhere else in central Granada, the best entrance is via Calle Calderería Nueva (near bus stop Gran Vía 1), a stepped cobblestone street lined with Arabic restaurants, tea shops, bakeries and shops selling imported goods from North Africa. However once inside the Albayzín you'll find the layout of the streets very confusing, with many steep sections and stairways - though this is indeed part of the charm of the neighborhood, always with a new path to explore or a hidden surprise waiting to be discovered. However, if the climb or the confusing layout sound like too much, you can also take the 31 or 32 minibuses to the top of the hill from Plaza Nueva (the 32 also offers a direct connection to the Alhambra).
San José Church (Iglesia de San José), C/. Cementerio de San José, 2, ☎ +34 958 227 671. Open for masses - winter: M-F and eves of festivals 18:30, Su and festivals 11:00; summer: M-F and eves of festivals 19:00, Su and festivals 11:00. Located in a spot previously occupied by the Almorabitín, or mosque of morabites, and is one of oldest churches in Granada, dating back to the sixteenth century. The architecture of the old mosque is still visible in parts, particularly in the minaret-turned-bell tower.
San Nicolas Viewpoint (Mirador de San Nicolas), Plaza San Nicolas (from the church at the end of Calle Caldereria Nueva, climb the path leading to the left and keep following the stairs uphill - eventually you will reach Camino Nueva de San Nicolas; at this point turn right and follow the cobblestone street uphill (at one point the road will fork - take the left route) until you reach the viewpoint; or take minibuses 31 or 32 to Plaza S. Nicolas stop). Always open. The most popular attraction in the Albayzin for tourists, this spot offers a spectacular view of the Alhambra and the mountains behind, as well as excellent vistas of the city and up the Rio Darro canyon. Free.
Mosque of Granada (Mezquita Mayor de Granada), (just off Plaza San Nicolas), ☎ +34 958 20 25 26, [17]. Following the Reconquista, Islam was banished from Spain and its practitioners were persecuted, effectively stomping out any practice of the religion in Spain for centuries thereafter. But in recent years Islam has been making a comeback in Spain and this mosque, built in 2003, now stands as a link with the Muslim Granada of old. The mosque maintains an open-door policy and while you need to arrange an appointment to see the main prayer spaces, you are free to enter the fragrant garden and take in the architecture of the rather humble yet beautiful building. Even if you have little interest in Islam the place is still worth visiting for the garden's marvelous view of the Alhambra and for the sight of Moorish-style architecture that's newly constructed rather than ancient and crumbling. Free.
Plaza Larga, Cuesta de Alhacaba and Calle del Agua del Albaicin. A small and shady plaza, this is the center of Albayzín for its residents, removed from the tourist crowds of the San Nicolas Viewpoint, surrounded by local shops and restaurants and home to a local market on Saturday mornings. On the west edge of the plaza, tucked around a corner, is Puerta Nueva, a passageway to Placeta de las Minas situated at the end of a remaining section of defensive wall which once protected the Albayzín. The wall itself is mostly inaccessible, but excellent views of the wall, which really speak to how imposing it must have looked from the outside, are available from the Mirador de San Cristobal uphill from Plaza Larga (alternatively you
can just walk along Cuesta de Alhacaba west from Plaza Larga from excellent views from beneath the wall).
Carrera del Darro
Below the Albayzin is Carrera del Darro, a narrow street winding from Plaza Nueva along the meandering Rio Darro and one of the most scenic walks in Granada, packed with pedestrians strolling the cobblestone way (who have to squeeze to the side every few minutes as a taxi or a minibus passes by) sandwiched between the crowded buildings extending up the hill into the Albayzin on one side and the river beneath the steep hill the Alhambra sits upon on the other. Along the way you'll find beautifully preserved buildings, remains of Arab houses, stone bridges crossing the Rio Darro and plenty of nice restaurants.
Hamman El Bañuelo, Carrera del Darro 31 (immediately across the street from the Bañuelo bus stop, routes 31, 32 and 35), ☎ +34 958 027 800. Tu-Sa 10:00-14:00. An unassuming-looking building from the outside, the Bañuelo is the ruins of perhaps the most well-preserved Arabic bath house in Spain. Once a popular socializing spot during Muslim Granada, most of the bath houses in the city were destroyed followed the Reconquista - this one survived due to the construction of a private home above. Inside you can view the beautiful architecture and learn how the bath house functioned, with its hot and cooling rooms and scenic courtyard. Free.