Alhambra
Nasrid palace city and fortress above Granada, with a timed entry slot for the carved palaces
Visit details
Overview
The Alhambra is the Nasrid palace city on the Sabika hill above Granada, begun in 1238 and extended for the next 250 years by the last Muslim dynasty to rule in the Iberian Peninsula. It is a walled enclosure roughly 740 metres long and 200 metres wide, about 142,000 square metres in total, and the name comes from the Arabic al-hamra, “the red one”, after the iron-rich clay in the walls.
What you buy with a general ticket is four separate places joined by garden paths: the Alcazaba, the military citadel at the western tip; the Nasrid Palaces, the carved and tiled royal rooms; the Partal, with its portico and reflecting pool; and the Generalife, the summer estate on the slope opposite. The Renaissance Palace of Charles V sits in the middle of all this, square and Italian and completely at odds with everything around it.
The medieval enclosure held more than the buildings that survive. Nasrid Granada ran six palaces plus two tower palaces up here, of which only the Comares and the Lions palaces are still standing, alongside a residential quarter, workshops and cisterns for the people who kept the court running. That is why the walk between the ticketed highlights crosses so much rubble, foundation and empty terrace: you are crossing the parts of the town that did not make it.
The visit is longer than people expect. The Patronato reckons three hours for the four spaces, and that is a brisk three hours with no queue for coffee and no time lost finding your way back to the Generalife. Around 2.3 million people do it every year, most of them Spanish, which tells you why the Nasrid Palaces run on a fixed timetable rather than a queue.
Go for the interiors rather than the views, satisfying though the views are. The Nasrid rooms are the reason the site is on the UNESCO list, and no photograph prepares you for standing under a ceiling built from several thousand separate plaster cells.
History
Muhammad I ibn al-Ahmar, the first Nasrid emir, moved his residence up to the Sabika hill in 1238 and built the Alcazaba first, because a court that could not defend itself was not going to last. The Torre del Homenaje at its north-eastern corner is the tallest thing he left, 26 metres over a base of 12.12 by 10.46 metres, with five floors and a line of sight to the watchtowers around the valley.
Behind the towers the Alcazaba was a working garrison quarter, split by a central street: houses with interior patios and water on the northern side, stores or barracks on the southern side. The Torre de la Vela at the western point carried a bell that marked the hours and the occasions, and it was rung hard enough to need replacing in 1569, 1598, 1624, 1640, 1655 and 1755. Granada put it on the city coat of arms in 1843.
The palaces came a century later. Isma’il I started the Comares complex during his reign from 1314 to 1325, Yusuf I carried it on from 1333 to 1354, and Muhammad V built the Court of the Lions between 1362 and 1390, after returning from exile in his second reign. The court poet Ibn Zamrak wrote twelve verses for the rim of the lion fountain, comparing the water to liquid silver running through jewels and playing on the idea that it seems to move and stand still at once.
In January 1492 the last Nasrid sultan handed the place over without a fight, and Ferdinand and Isabella moved in. They signed the Alhambra Decree, which expelled the Jews from Spain, inside these walls, and received Christopher Columbus here when he was still looking for backers.
Charles V put his own stamp on it in 1527, commissioning Pedro Machuca, an architect trained in Rome under Michelangelo, to build a Renaissance palace in the middle of the Nasrid one. Work stopped in 1637 with the building open to the sky, and it stayed roofless for 330 years: the roof went on in 1967.
The nineteenth century nearly finished the job the French started. The occupation of 1808 to 1812 did structural damage, an earthquake in 1821 did more, and by the time Washington Irving turned up in 1829 and wrote Tales of the Alhambra the place was a romantic ruin with people living in it. Irving’s book is why northern Europeans started arriving, and why the first restorers gave them roughly what they had read about.
Those early campaigns were run by the Contreras family from 1828 onwards, and their idea of restoration involved adding domes and details that had never been there, because visitors expected an eastern fantasy and the Contreras were happy to supply it. Leopoldo Torres Balbás, chief architect from 1923 to 1936, reversed a lot of it and replaced missing elements only where the archaeology supported it. If a wall or arch strikes you as unexpectedly bare, that restraint is usually the reason.
Spain declared the site a national monument in 1870 and UNESCO inscribed it in 1984. Conservation has not stopped since, so on any given visit expect scaffolding somewhere and at least one room roped off.
Visiting
The complex opens daily from 08:30 to 20:00 between 1 April and 14 October, and from 08:30 to 18:00 between 15 October and 31 March. It closes on 25 December and 1 January. The Alhambra General ticket costs 22.27 euros and covers the Alcazaba, the Nasrid Palaces and the Generalife; book it at tickets.alhambra-patronato.es.
Your ticket carries one fixed time for the Nasrid Palaces. Everything else runs on general opening hours, so the whole visit is built around that slot: arrive early, do whatever is on the way, and be at the palace door before your time.
Alcazaba
Start here if your slot is later in the morning. The citadel is mostly foundations at ground level, one street with the outlines of houses and stores on either side, and the interest is in the towers and what you can see from them. Steps are steep and worn, and there is no lift.
Nasrid Palaces
Three linked buildings, walked in a set order: the Mexuar, where the administration sat, then the Comares Palace with the Hall of the Ambassadors, then the Palace of the Lions. The Court of the Lions is 28.7 metres by 15.6 metres, ringed by a portico of 17 bays on the long sides and 11 on the short ones, with twelve marble lions holding up the central basin.
The two rooms off the court are where you should spend your time rather than at the fountain, which is where everyone else is standing. The Hall of the Abencerrajes is roofed by a sixteen-sided cupola cut as an eight-pointed star and pierced by sixteen windows. The Hall of the Two Sisters has an eight-sided dome assembled from at least 5,000 separate prismatic pieces, one of the great muqarnas ceilings anywhere in the Islamic world. Both reward standing still and looking up for a minute, which almost nobody does.
Palace of Charles V
Machuca’s building is a square block wrapped around a circular courtyard, 63 metres square and 17 metres high, and the collision of geometries is the point. It houses the Alhambra Museum on the ground floor, in its present form since 1995, and the Fine Arts Museum of Granada upstairs, there since 1958.
Partal and Generalife
The Partal portico and its pool come immediately after the palace exit, and the path then runs the length of the hill to the Generalife, the Nasrid summer estate, which has its own guide. Leave 45 minutes for it and do not do it first, because the walk back is uphill.
Night visits and cheaper tickets
The Nasrid Palaces open at night from Tuesday to Saturday, 22:00 to 23:30, between 1 April and 14 October, and on Friday and Saturday, 20:00 to 21:30, between 15 October and 31 March. That ticket costs 12.73 euros and covers the Patio de Machuca, the Mexuar and the Patio y Cuarto Dorado only, not the Alcazaba or the gardens.
If the general ticket is sold out, the Gardens, Generalife and Alcazaba ticket at 12.73 euros gets you everything except the Nasrid Palaces, and the night gardens ticket at 8.48 euros runs on its own short season. The Dobla de Oro at 30.48 euros adds a set of Andalusi monuments down in the city.
Tips
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Book online and book early. The general ticket is capped at ten tickets per person per month, and same-day tickets do exist at the access pavilion but only subject to availability, which on a summer morning means no.
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Carry photo ID. Every visitor must hold their own ticket for the whole visit and show it with an official identity document, so a screenshot on one phone for four people will not work.
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If you are collecting tickets at the monument rather than showing them on a phone, do it at least an hour before your Nasrid Palaces time. That is the official deadline, not a suggestion.
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Travel light. Backpacks, bags, suitcases and similar are not allowed inside; only small personal bags and packs under 40 by 40 cm get through, and packs have to be worn on the front.
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Eat before or after, not during. Food inside comes from vending machines at the Entrance Pavilion, the service pavilion by the Puerta del Vino and the car park, and eating is only permitted in the designated rest areas such as the Plaza de los Aljibes and the gardens by the cannons.
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Toilets are in the building next to the Puerta del Vino and in the Generalife on the Paseo de los Nogales, both with baby-changing facilities. There are none inside the palaces, so go before your slot.
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The Patronato is currently running a free audio guide in trial phase, so check the official site before paying a third party for one.
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Children under 12 go free, but the free ticket has to be booked together with a paying one. Turning up with an unbooked child is a problem at the gate, not a formality.
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Driving up is easier than the guidebooks suggest. The monitored public car park holds 360 vehicles, is open 24 hours and has reserved spaces for disabled visitors, coaches and caravans; cyclists leave bikes in the Plaza de la Alhambra outside.
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Groups are capped at 30 people, children under three excluded, and nobody may peel off from a group before it leaves the complex. If you want to wander at your own pace, buy an individual ticket.
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April, May, September and October are the months to aim for. Summer afternoons on the hill are hard work and the gardens are at their worst.
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The shop at the access pavilion and the one in the Palace of Charles V both get busy at closing. There is a third branch in the city on Reyes Católicos 40 if you would rather buy your books later.
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