Today started early as we were still walking back uphill to our hotel after midnight! This is a rare event and it was lovely to see the city at night. It was surprisingly quiet and tranquil and an interesting contrast to the hordes of tourists earlier in the day.
We’d booked our Alhambra tour some time ago as we’d heard that it sold out way in advance. When we checked our tickets we found that the meeting point was actually at our hotel, so extremely convenient! This was excellent as we’d only booked the hotel a few days ago!
We’d booked with Granada Travel and were very impressed with how organised it all was.
Initially it seemed like there was a worrying number of people in the group, but they then divided it between two guides. Each of us was given a listening device so that we could hear the guide from a distance. Our guide, Jaime, was really excellent. He was very enthusiastic and well-informed and clearly appreciated having the Alhambra and the gardens of the Generalife as his office! We visited briefly many years ago but it was really good to do a detailed tour and it was also a real advantage to skip the queues and go through the group tour entry points.
The Alhambra was the palace and fortress of the Moorish monarchs of Granada, Spain. The name Alhambra, signifying in Arabic “the red,” is derived from the reddish colour of the local soil from which the outer walls were built. The guide highlighted the relatively plain exterior in comparison to the ornate interiors. He told us the old saying from Granada:
“En casa del moro, por fuera de barro, por dentro de oro” (The moor’s house, the outside made of mud, the inside of gold)
Generalife - The Gardens
First, we walked past the modern outdoor theatre area built in the 1950s – it is used for outdoor performances and has a backdrop of Cypress trees so as not to spoil the view from above. We then entered the gardens of the Generalife. This served as a summer house for the sultans of Granada and is located uphill from The Alhambra. The most notable elements of this area were the use of water, the beautiful planting, smells of the plants and the ornate interiors.
Secondly, the gardens and aromas: there are 100 state employees who maintain these gardens and this was evident in their immaculate presentation. Throughout the visit we saw a vast array of plants and carefully maintained topiary. Granada means pomegranate and there were lots of pomegranate trees which are currently in the flowering stage with orange blossoms. We also saw many orange trees of the type used to make marmalade. These produce very bitter oranges and can be identified by the double structure of their leaves. There were an abundance of roses and the guide explained that these were cultivated without any use of chemicals. The threat of aphids was instead addressed by attaching small boxes of ladybirds to some of the roses so that the ladybirds then controlled the aphids. The gardens were really stunning and you could also book a tour to see them lit up at night.
Finally the interior decorations: these were very opulent due to the wealth of the sultans. They made their wealth due to silk and as a result their palaces became increasingly ornate. On the decorated walls and ceilings there were fragments of blue preserved – this was lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and was the most expensive of colours at the time.
We headed into the Alhambra palace lower down the hill from the Generalife. Jaime explained that there were three palaces, created by the grandfather, his son and his grandson and increasing in luxury with each generation. On our way we passed the primarily 16th century Charles V palace. The convent and Charles the fifth Palace were added later on in Christian times.
He was the grandson of of the Catholic Kings and nephew of Katherine of Aragon. The Renaissance style Palace stood in sharp contrast to the arabic style of the Alhambra complex.
The grandfather Alhamar started to build the first Nasrid palace (The Mexuar) in the 13th century. Most of the surviving buildings date back to the 14th century. Again, there is plenty of preserved blue lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, a lot of symbols including the pomegranate fruit, the emblem of Granada (which means pomegranate) The main meeting room had a side room which faced Mecca – this facilitated the Muslim tradition of praying five times a day.
The son Yusuf’s palace (The palace of Comares) was more intricate than the previous one. It had more ornate tiles and decorative plaster on the walls and ceilings. There was a large central room where he would meet his subjects and they would come to petition for favours. There was also an escape tunnel that he could use if things went wrong. Beyond that was another beautiful room which only royalty and ambassadors got to go into. Intricate sculpted ceilings attempted to recreate the cave where the Koran was revealed. The repeated motif ‘only Allah is victorious’ could be seen in the plasterwork. One particularly intricate ceiling was set to show the seven levels of heaven. This is where the phrase ‘in seventh heaven’ originated from. There were four equal side rooms for the four wives permitted and further galleries rooms for the concubines.
The grandson was the most hedonistic of them all and his Palace of the Lions displayed the most luxury. The use of angled entrances maximised the surprise element of the beautiful decoration. This was a private palace for the use of the family only and he even broke one of the rules of the Koran by including a depiction of people on one of the ceilings. This was painted on horse leather by a Christian painter. One of the most iconic images of the whole of the Alhambra is that of the Patio de los leones with its beautiful central fountain and beyond that there is a further room which evokes the cave of the prophet Mohamed. The stained glass in this palace is the most luxurious thing in the whole of the Alhambra. The whole visit to the palaces felt much less crowded than the initial visit to the Generalife. This is because, although they get 7,OOO tourists a day on average, they only open the doors to the palaces once every half hour so that you do not get the same feeling of overcrowding.
Flamenco in Sacromonte
After the visit, we chilled at the hotel for a while and then headed off to see a flamenco show in one of the caves of Sacromonte. (Cueva Flamenca Las Amayas) It was a small venue which could accommodate about 60 people and gives performances of traditional zambra gitana. We caught two buses up there and stopped off for a drink first. We should have got there earlier as Dave ended up sitting right next to one of the dancers so we were really close to the action!!Those who arrived early got the best views. There was a guitarist, a singer, two female dancers and a male dancer. We were so close to the dance floor that we got a brilliant view of the footwork and could feel the air flow as they swished their skirts. The dancing was superb and the noise built to a crescendo. We were glad not to have missed the opportunity to see Zambra in the place where it had originated, based on earlier morisco styles of dance.
The vocal style associated with flamenco is called ‘cante jondo’ and in 1922 the composer Manuel de Falla and poet Federico García Lorca organised the first Cante Jondo competition which was held in the grounds of The Alhambra. This event helped to widely promote this element of the Andalusian gipsy culture. Both artists were inspired in their work by this local culture.
After that we went back to Bar Pibe. Sacromonte is a lovely area and well worth a trip on its own. We had a light dinner – chicken and almond pie for Dave and fish with tomatoes and peppers for me – all with a stunning view across to The Alhambra and the Generalife. We walked back down the hill and then got the bus back up the slope – we even bumped into Jack as we caught the bus, which almost made us feel like locals!
