3. Palacios Nazaries
Palacios

During the 30-minute entry time slot stamped on your ticket, enter the jewel of the Alhambra: the Moorish royal palace. Once you’re in, you can relax — there are no more time constraints. You’ll walk through three basic sections: royal offices, ceremonial rooms, and private quarters. Built mostly in the 14th century, this palace offers your best possible look at the refined, elegant Moorish civilization of Al-Andalus (Arabic for the Iberian Peninsula).

You’ll visit rooms decorated from top to bottom with carved wood ceilings, stucco “stalactites,” ceramic tiles, molded-plaster walls, and filigree windows. Open-air courtyards in the palace feature fountains with bubbling water like a desert oasis, the Quran’s symbol of heaven. The palace is well-preserved, but the trick is to imagine it furnished and filled with Moorish life…sultans with hookah pipes lounging on pillows on Persian carpets, tapestries on the walls, heavy curtains on the windows, and ivory-studded wooden furniture. The whole place was painted with bright colors, many suggested by the Quran — red (blood), blue (heaven), green (oasis), and gold (wealth). And throughout the palace, walls, ceilings, vases, carpets, and tiles were covered with decorative patterns, mostly calligraphy writing out verses of praise from the Quran.

As tempting as it might be to touch, stucco is very susceptible to the oils from your hand. If everyone that went through the Alhambra touched a wall, there would be no decoration left for the next generation to treasure.

As you wander, keep the palace themes in mind: water, no images, “stalactite” ceilings — and few signs telling you where you are. Even today, the route constantly changes. Use the map in this chapter to locate the essential stops listed below.

Court of Myrtles (Patio de los Arrayanes): Walk through a few administrative rooms (the mexuar) until you hit a big rectangular courtyard with a pond lined by a myrtle bush hedge — the Court of Myrtles (Patio de los Arrayanes). Moors loved their patios — with a garden and water, under the sky. Women, who rarely went out, stayed in touch with nature here, in the Court of Myrtles (Patio de los Arrayanes). One exotic theory about the function of this complex is that the living quarters for the women (harem) were upstairs — the Quran let a man have “all the women you can maintain with dignity.” Notice the wooden screens (erected by jealous husbands) that allowed the cloistered women to look out without being clearly seen. The less interesting, but more likely, theory is that the upstairs was for winter use, and the cooler ground level was for the hotter summer.

Boat Room (Sala de la Barca): Head left (north) from the entry into the long, narrow antechamber to the throne room, called the “Boat Room.” It’s understandable that many think the Boat Room (Sala de la Barca) is named for the upside-down-hull shape of its fine cedar ceiling. But the name is actually derived from the Arab word baraka, meaning “divine blessing and luck” (which was corrupted to barca, similar to the Spanish word for “boat,” barco.) As you passed through this room, blessings and luck are exactly what you’d need — because in the next room, you’d be face-to-face with the sultan.

The Hall of the Ambassadors (Gran Salón de Embajadores): A visitor here would have stepped from the glaring Court of Myrtles into this dim, cool, incense-filled world, to meet the silhouetted sultan. Imagine the alcoves functioning busily as work stations, and the light at sunrise or sunset, rich and warm, filling the room.

Note the finely carved Arabic script. Muslims avoided making images of living creatures — that was God’s work. But they could carve decorative religious messages. One phrase — “only Allah is victorious” — is repeated 9,000 times throughout the palace. Find the character for “Allah” — it looks like a cursive W with a nose on its left side. The swoopy toboggan blades underneath are a kind of artistic punctuation setting off one phrase.

In 1492, two historic events likely took place in this room. Culminating a 700-year-long battle, the Reconquista was completed here as the last Moorish king, Boabdil, signed the terms of his surrender before eventually leaving for Africa.

And it was here that Columbus made his pitch to Isabel and Ferdinand to finance a sea voyage to the Orient. Imagine the scene: The king, the queen, and the greatest minds from the University of Salamanca gathered here while Columbus produced maps and pie charts to make his case that he could sail west to reach the East. Ferdinand and the professors laughed and called Columbus mad — not because they thought the world was flat (most educated people knew otherwise), but because they thought Columbus had underestimated the size of the globe, and thus the length and cost of the journey.

But Isabel said “Sí, señor.” Columbus fell to his knees (promising to pack light, wear a money belt, and use the most current guidebook available), and she gave him an ATM card with a wad of travelers checks as a backup.

Continue deeper into the palace to a court where, 600 years ago, only the royal family and their servants could enter. It’s the much-photographed…
Court of the Lions

Court of the Lions (Patio de los Leones): This patio, the Patio de los Leones, features a fountain that’s usually ringed with 12 lions, but they’ve been removed for two years for restoration (probably back in place in 2009). One of the lions is on display in the Museo de la Alhambra inside the Charles V palace.

Why did the fountain have 12 lions? Since the fountain was a gift from a Jewish leader celebrating good relations with the sultan (Granada had a big Jewish community), the lions probably represent the 12 tribes of Israel. During Moorish times, the fountain functioned as a clock, with a different lion spouting water each hour. (Conquering Christians disassembled the fountain to see how it worked, and it’s never worked since.) From the center, four streams went out — figuratively to the corners of the earth and literally to various apartments of the royal family. Notice how the court, with its 124 columns, resembles the cloister of a Catholic monastery. The craftsmanship is first-class. For example, the lead fittings between the pre-cut sections of the columns allow things to flex during an earthquake (which it has, preventing destruction during shakes).

On the right, off the courtyard, is a square room called the Hall of the Abencerrajes (Sala de los Abencerrajes). According to legend, the father of Boabdil took a new wife and wanted to disinherit the children of his first marriage — one of whom was Boabdil. In order to deny power to Boabdil and his siblings, he killed nearly the entire pro-Boabdil Abencerraje family. The sultan thought this would pave the way for the son of his new wife to be the next sultan. Happily, he stacked 36 Abencerraje heads in the pool under this sumptuous honeycombed stucco ceiling. But his scheme failed, and Boabdil ultimately assumed the throne. Bloody power struggles like this were the norm here in the Alhambra.

The Hall of the Kings (Sala de los Reyes) is at the end of the court opposite where you entered. Notice the ceilings of the three chambers branching off this gallery. Breaking from the tradition of imageless art, paintings on the goat-leather ceiling depict scenes of the sultan and his family. The center room shows a group portrait of the first 10 of the Alhambra’s 22 sultans. The scene is a fantasy, since these people lived over a span of many generations. The two end rooms show scenes of princely pastimes, such as hunting and shooting skeet. In a palace otherwise devoid of figures, these offer a rare look at royal life in the palace.

The next room, the Hall of the Two Sisters (Sala de Dos Hermanas), has another oh-wow stucco ceiling lit from below by clerestory windows. The room features geometric patterns and stylized Arabic script quoting verses from the Quran, but no figures. If the inlaid color tiles look “Escher-esque,” you’ve got it backwards: Escher is Alhambra-esque. M. C. Escher was inspired by these very patterns on his visit. Study the patterns — they remind us of the Moorish expertise in math.

Washington Irving Room: That’s about it for the palace. From here you wander through a few more rooms including one (marked with a large plaque) where Washington Irving wrote Tales of the Alhambra. While living in Spain in 1829, Irving stayed in the Alhambra. It was a romantic time, when the place was home to Gypsies and donkeys. His “tales” kindled interest in the place, causing it to become recognized as a national treasure. A plaque on the wall thanks Irving, who later served as the US ambassador to Spain (1842–1846). Here’s a quote from Irving’s “The Alhambra by Moonlight”: “On such heavenly nights I would sit for hours at my window inhaling the sweetness of the garden, and musing on the checkered fortunes of those whose history was dimly shadowed out in the elegant memorials around.”

Hallway with a view: Here you’ll enjoy the best-in-the-palace view of the labyrinthine Albayzín — the old Moorish town on the opposite hillside. Find the famous viewpoint (below where the white San Nicolás church tower breaks the horizon). Creeping into the mountains on the right are the Roma (Gypsy) neighborhoods of Sacromonte. Still circling old Granada is the Moorish wall (built in the 1400s to protect the city’s population, swollen by Muslim refugees driven south by the Reconquista).

Leaving the Palacios Nazaries, follow signs to the Partal Gardens, go through the gardens, then follow signs directing you left to the Generalife Gardens or right to the exit.