The Alhambra in Granada: Visiting the Nasrid Palaces and Generalife Gardens

Seen from the Albayzín at dusk, the Alhambra looks less like a building than a ridge that has turned to stone, its red walls glowing above the cypresses with the snow of the Sierra Nevada behind. Up close, it is something else again: a palace city of courtyards, water and carved plaster, built by the last Muslim dynasty in Spain and preserved, against the odds, by the Christian kings who took it in 1492. This guide to the Alhambra, Granada’s great monument, explains what you will see in each part of the hill, how the timed entry to the Nasrid Palaces works, and how much walking a visit involves. It is also the last full day of our Small Group Tour of Spain & Portugal, which ends in Granada after twenty-four days on the road from Barcelona.

A palace city on the Sabika hill

The Alhambra stands on the Sabika, a long spur of hill above the valley of the Darro, facing the old Muslim quarter of the Albayzín across the Darro gorge. Its name comes from the Arabic al-qal’a al-hamra, the red fortress, after the colour of the rammed earth and brick from which it was built. There were fortifications here earlier, but the Alhambra as we know it is the work of the Nasrid dynasty, founded by Muhammad I in 1232; he made Granada his capital a few years later and began building on this hill. For two and a half centuries, as the rest of Al-Andalus fell to the Christian kingdoms of the north, the Nasrids held on to the Kingdom of Granada, and they spent much of that time building on this hill.

What they left is not one palace but a small walled city: a military citadel at the western tip, a sequence of royal palaces in the middle, a residential quarter with workshops, baths and houses, and, on the neighbouring hill, a country estate of gardens and orchards. The last Nasrid sultan, Muhammad XII, known to the Christians as Boabdil, handed the keys of the city to Ferdinand and Isabella on 2 January 1492. The Catholic Monarchs chose to keep the palaces rather than destroy them, and their grandson Charles V added a palace of his own. In 1984 UNESCO listed the Alhambra and the Generalife as a World Heritage site; the Albayzín was added ten years later. For the wider story of the kingdom, our guide to Granada, Spain, the last Moorish stronghold covers the city below the hill.

The Alcazaba: the fortress at the western tip

The oldest part of the complex is the Alcazaba, the citadel that guarded the hill’s western point. Much of it survives only as low walls, so that inside the walls you walk among the outlined foundations of the soldiers’ quarters, with their barracks, cisterns and baths. The real reward is above. The Torre de la Vela, the watchtower at the far end, carries a bell that once regulated the irrigation of the plain below, and its terrace gives one of the widest views in Granada: the white houses of the Albayzín to the north, the cathedral and the modern city to the west, and the Sierra Nevada to the south-east. It was on this tower that the banners of Castile were raised in January 1492.

The Nasrid Palaces: the heart of the Alhambra

Most people come for the Nasrid Palaces, and they are right to. Three linked buildings make up the sequence, and the route through them follows the order in which a visitor to the sultan’s court would once have moved, from public business to the most private rooms.

The Mexuar

The Mexuar was where the sultan’s council met and where justice was done. It is the most altered of the three, having been turned into a chapel after 1492, but its tiled dado and the small oratory at the end, with windows looking down over the Albayzín, set the tone for what follows: plain floors, rich walls and constant glimpses of the world outside.

The Comares Palace and the Court of the Myrtles

The Comares Palace was the official residence of the sultan, built largely under Yusuf I and his son Muhammad V in the fourteenth century. Its centre is the Court of the Myrtles, a long rectangular pool flanked by clipped myrtle hedges, in which the massive Comares Tower is reflected almost perfectly. The tower holds the Hall of the Ambassadors, the throne room, whose wooden ceiling of thousands of interlocking pieces represents the seven heavens of Islamic cosmology. Look closely at the walls in every room: the carved stucco is covered with Arabic inscriptions, among them verses of poetry and the Nasrid motto, “There is no victor but God”.

The Palace of the Lions

The Palace of the Lions, built under Muhammad V, was the private quarter of the royal family. Its courtyard is the most famous image of the Alhambra: a forest of slender marble columns carrying arches of lace-like plaster, with four channels of water running from the centre towards the rooms on each side, and in the middle a fountain whose basin rests on the backs of twelve stone lions. Off the courtyard open the Hall of the Abencerrajes and the Hall of the Two Sisters, each roofed with a muqarnas dome of thousands of small honeycomb cells that seem to dissolve into light. Our article on Moorish architecture in Córdoba, Seville and Granada explains how these forms developed over six centuries of building in Al-Andalus.

How does the timed entry to the Nasrid Palaces work?

Every ticket that includes the Nasrid Palaces carries a fixed entry time for them, and you must go in at that time; the Alhambra stresses punctuality, and the rest of the complex can be seen before or after. Before you go, check the current conditions on the official site of the Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife, which publishes opening hours, prices, the rules for collecting tickets and the identity documents you will need. On both of our tours the Alhambra visit is guided, so you see the palaces with someone who knows their history; bring your passport, as identity is checked on entry.

The Palace of Charles V

Between the Alcazaba and the Nasrid Palaces stands a building that seems to have wandered in from Rome. The Palace of Charles V, designed by Pedro Machuca and begun in 1527, is a square block of honey-coloured stone enclosing a perfectly circular courtyard ringed by two storeys of columns. It is one of the most ambitious Renaissance buildings in Spain, and also a deliberate statement: the Holy Roman Emperor placing his own architecture of power beside the sultans’. Work stopped and started for centuries, and the palace now houses the Museum of the Alhambra, with objects from the Nasrid palaces, and the Museum of Fine Arts on the upper floor.

The Partal and the walk to the Generalife

Beyond the Palace of the Lions, the route leaves the enclosed rooms for the gardens of the Partal, where a small arcaded pavilion with a tower looks over a long pool, and then follows the line of the walls past a series of towers that were themselves small palaces. From there a path leads out of the walled precinct and up the neighbouring hill to the Generalife.

The Generalife: the sultans’ summer gardens

The Generalife was the Nasrid rulers’ country estate, a place of orchards, vegetable gardens and pavilions within a short walk of the court but quieter and cooler. Its best-known space is the Patio de la Acequia, a long, narrow garden courtyard with a water channel down its centre, flower beds on either side and rows of jets arching over the water. The jets themselves are a later addition, but the channel is fed, like the rest of the Alhambra, by the Acequia Real, the royal water channel the Nasrids brought from the river Darro higher up the valley. Water is the thread that ties the whole hill together: it fills the pools, runs in the channels of the Court of the Lions and keeps the gardens green through the Andalusian summer.

The upper gardens, reached by a stairway whose handrails are channels of running water, give a last view back across the palaces to the Albayzín. Washington Irving, who lodged in the Alhambra in 1829 and published his Tales of the Alhambra in 1832, did much to bring the half-forgotten palace to the attention of the wider world, and the gardens are where his romantic Alhambra is easiest to imagine.

How much walking and climbing does the Alhambra involve?

Expect several hours on your feet and a fair amount of climbing. The complex covers the length of a hilltop, the paths between its parts include slopes and steps of uneven heights, and surfaces range from smooth marble to cobblestones and bare earth, so comfortable, flat, closed shoes matter. Climbing the Torre de la Vela in the Alcazaba adds a steep stair, and the upper Generalife gardens are reached by flights of steps. Our Spain and Portugal tour is rated Level 2, Moderate: you should be able to manage three to five hours of activity a day, roughly the equivalent of walking up to 8 kilometres on uneven ground, and to climb and descend stairs.

What should you bring on the day?

Bring your passport, a refillable water bottle and a small bag. Identity is checked on entry, drinking directly from the fountains is not permitted, and large bags and backpacks are not allowed into the monument; the Patronato’s site gives the current size limit. In summer a hat and sunscreen are worth carrying, since the Alcazaba and the gardens offer little shade at midday.

How long should you allow for a visit to the Alhambra, Granada?

Allow at least half a day. A visit that takes in the Alcazaba, the Nasrid Palaces, the Partal and the Generalife fills most of a morning or an afternoon at an unhurried pace, longer if you add the museums in the Palace of Charles V. On the Spain and Portugal tour the visit is guided and the rest of the afternoon is free, so you can return to the gardens, rest at the hotel or walk down into the city.

Granada beyond the hill: the Royal Chapel and the Albayzín

The Alhambra makes most sense when it is set against the city below it. On the morning of the visit, our local guide first shows the group the main sights of Granada and the Royal Chapel, the Capilla Real, where Ferdinand and Isabella chose to be buried in the city whose conquest crowned their reign. The chapel stands beside the cathedral, and seeing the royal tombs before climbing the hill puts the events of 1492 into human terms. Across the Darro, the steep lanes and whitewashed walled houses of the Albayzín climb to viewpoints from which the whole Alhambra is laid out against the mountains. To understand how Granada grew from the culture of Córdoba, our article on Córdoba and Granada and the world of Al-Andalus traces the line between the two cities, both of which the tour visits on consecutive days.

The Alhambra as the end of the journey

On the Spain and Portugal small group tour, the Alhambra is the grand finale. The route begins with Gaudí in Barcelona, crosses the Basque Country and Castile, spends four nights in Madrid, crosses into northern Portugal at Braga and Porto, travels south to Lisbon, and returns to Spain through Roman Mérida and Seville. On Day 22 the group meets a local guide in Córdoba for the Mezquita before driving on to Granada, and Day 23 is given to the Royal Chapel, the Alhambra and the Generalife, ending with a farewell dinner in a local restaurant. The tour ends after breakfast the following morning. Our Spain and Portugal itinerary for mature travellers walks through the whole twenty-four days, stage by stage.

Discover Spain, a 21-day tour of Spain alone, reaches Granada by way of Ronda and gives a day to a guided visit of the Alhambra, with an evening stroll in the Albayzín and a flamenco dinner in Sacromonte, before continuing east to Murcia, Cuenca and Valencia.

Whichever way you come to it, the Alhambra rewards the effort. It is a building you understand slowly, one courtyard at a time, and the memory that stays is often not a single room but the movement between them: from shade to light, from plain wall to carved plaster, and always the sound of water. Walking it with a guide who knows the history, with time afterwards to go back on your own, lets it work on you at its own pace.