Part fortification, part palace and part pleasure garden, the Alhambra is one of the most beautiful and evocative buildings to visit in Europe. The subtle and delicate curves of the Moorish architecture contrast with the brutal gaudiness of the catholic post-Reconquista buildings.
Visiting The Alhambra
The key with a visit to the Alhambra is to book your tickets in advance. There are various options to visit the outer buildings, the Nasrid Palaces or even a night tour and the official booking site is here although there are plenty of other sites that offer tickets.
As you’d expect, the site is well signposted, has huge parking areas and all the facilities you’d need. Just be aware it is a big site and you need a good half day to wander around and see everything, even if you don’t linger anywhere.
My Experience
Well I have trimmed the original 252 photos down to a more manageable 52! This was a long and tiring day – 2.5 hours drive each way which was nerve wracking for me, lots of bridges and chasms to cross as well as the extra concentration required for driving on the right. We arrived at about 1 and got a ticket for 2PM but the entrance to the palaces wasn’t until 7PM so we had a 6 hour visit overall.
I won’t complain about the heat but it was damned hot! The place is amazing, the fortress side has very impressive defences and the palaces are real works of beauty. Once the catholics captured it they built a palace of their own inside and the contrast between that and the Moorish ones is very marked. The Moorish ones are light, airy delicate and beautiful – the catholic one, well, it isn’t any of those things. Big and imposing yes but not pretty. It is easy to see why they regarded us and the uncivilized brutes 600 years ago.
Our second visit was in 2024, part of a week long trip around southern Spain, detailed in my blog here. We had a full day at the Alhambra and also a night tour of the Nasrid Palaces, definitely worth it!
The Alhambra Photo Gallery
History
The history of the Alhambra is linked with the geographical place where it is located: Granada. On a rocky hill that is difficult to access, on the banks of the River Darro, protected by mountains and surrounded by woods, among the oldest quarters in the city, the Alhambra rises up like an imposing castle with reddish tones in its ramparts that prevent the outside world from seeing the delicate beauty they enclose.
Originally designed as a military area, the Alhambra became the residence of royalty and of the court of Granada in the middle of the thirteenth century, after the establishment of the Nasrid kingdom and the construction of the first palace, by the founder king Mohammed ibn Yusuf ben Nasr, better known as Alhamar. Throughout the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the fortress became a citadel with high ramparts and defensive towers, which house two main areas: the military area, or Alcazaba, the barracks of the royal guard, and the medina or court city, the location of the famous Nasrid Palaces and the remains of the houses of noblemen and plebeians who lived there. The Charles V Palace (which was built after the city was taken by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492) is also in the medina. The complex of monuments also has an independent palace opposite the Alhambra, surrounded by orchards and gardens, which was where the Granadine kings relaxed: the Generalife.
References
The official ticket site for advanced tickets to visit the Alhambra is here.
There is an excellent article on the history of the site here.
The brief history above was copied from the Alhambra site, here.
The Spanish Wars site has a great summary of the conquest of Granada here.
Interesting engineering has an excellent article on the fortifications here.