Granada Information: THE
ALBAICIN |
The Albaicin, sitting on a hill opposite the Alhambra and separated
from it by the Darro and its Valparafso valley, maintains a strong
Arab presence in the walls, towers, water cisterns, carmenes, Arab
and Morisco houses, and all as part of the area's urban layout. One
of the neighbourhood's infinite charms are the miradores or vantage-points,
invented by Granada to take pleasure in itself and which are dotted
all over the city, though particularly here in the AIbaicin. The most
well known, San Nicolas, is in a square bordered by the whitewashed
walls of the church, a water cistern and a type of natural barbican.
The Alhambra and Sierra Nevada are directly opposite, and this is
the perfect spot to admire them from. A more elementary mirador is
San Cristóbal, with no more than a rotunda and a church. The
third, in the Plaza de San Miguel, features open spaces, church fronts,
a stone Christ from the eighteenth century, a water cistern from the
thirteenth century and terraces where one can sit and admire the view;
together with the San Jose church tower, the oldest minaret in Granada,
free standing and built on a base of Roman ashlar stone. Near the
square is the marvel of the Palacio de Daralhorra, also known as Casa
de la Reina (Queen's House), as it was inhabited by Aixa, mother of
Boabdil, the last Nasrid king. The palace was completed in the middle
of the fifteenth century. The "highly complete and noteworthy"
adornments of the building reproduce, in part, those of the Alhambra.
The palace was a kind of compensation by King Muley Hacen when he
abandoned his wife to marry a Castilian, Isabel de Soils. The building's
foundations feature the strong mortar walls befitting a palace of
this nature. The Santa Isabel Monastery has a church of much artistic
worth.
The roughness of the whitewash on the walls contrasts with the richness
of the stone used for the entrance, attributed to Enrique Egas. The
coffering features plateresque themes. In the high chapel, the wooden
roofing is Gothic with pyramid moulding. In Arab times there were
as many as fifty public aljibes (fountains for drawing water), of
which almost half have survived to this day. A leisurely stroll around
the Albaicfn always leads to the discovery of daunting sloped streets
with rich-sounding names and an ever stranger meaning. Other finds
include Christian towers such as San Bartolome, built in brick with
tiled arches and glazed discs and Arab towers incorporated into Christian
churches, such as at San Juan de Los Reyes, decorated with panels
of sebka (a decorative technique involving a mesh of rhombuses, normally
in brick), and a ramp inside, though it is a hidden tower and can
only be found by searching for it.
In the Albaicín, one always ends up in the Plaza Larga, the
traditional and historical centre of the neighbourhood. In the nearby
Calle de Agua were the Arab baths, decorated with capitals from the
Visigothic and caliphate eras, and since removed to be placed in museums.
Almost all the surviving Arab gates are in the Albaicfn. They may
be huge gates, such as the Puerta de Fajaluaza, or much smaller, such
as Puerta Nueva, the solidity of which has managed to defy the natural
erosion of time. Other gates, such as the Puerta de Monaita and the
Puerta de Hizmn, rebuilt in the seventh century on the site of previous
gates, are visible proof of the history of this area. More open than
Plaza Larga is Plaza del Salvador, the church of which, with Renaissance
portals and other features, was originally the neighbourhood's main
mosque. |
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