Generalife

Overview

The Generalife is the Nasrid summer estate on the ridge above the Alhambra, a small palace wrapped in courtyards, water channels and terraced gardens that the sultans of Granada used as a retreat and a working farm. It has no ticket of its own. Every Alhambra ticket includes it, and the cheapest way in is the 12.73 euro Gardens and Generalife day ticket, which covers the Generalife gardens and palace, the Alcazaba, the Partal and the walled gardens below, but not the Nasrid Palaces.

What you come for is the Patio de la Acequia, a long walled courtyard of 12.8 by 48.7 metres with a water channel running its full length, flanked by four flowerbeds and crossed by arcs of water from jets on either side. A mirador in the north tower looks straight across the ravine at the Albaicín, which is the point: the whole estate is built to frame the city it governed while staying out of sight of it. Come early and the courtyard is quiet enough to hear the water; by late morning the platform in the middle is a queue of cameras.

The gardens are also the one part of the Alhambra complex that is still farmed. The Patronato manages close to 12 hectares of planted gardens, and the huertas around the Generalife have been worked without a break since medieval times. Under your feet, the paths are paved in the traditional Granada style with patterned pebbles: white stones from the Darro, black ones from the Genil.

The Generalife has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1984, inscribed together with the Alhambra. Budget an hour to ninety minutes for the gardens alone, or around three hours if you are doing the full complex in one go.

History

The estate went up at the end of the 13th century, most likely under Muhammad II, who ruled from 1273 to 1302, or else early in the next century under Muhammad III. Muhammad III added the mirador chamber in the northern pavilion, the room that still gives the best view over the valley. This was never a fortress or a state palace. It was an almunia, a country property with orchards and irrigated fields attached, and the terraced huertas below the walls were the point of it as much as the courtyards were.

Later sultans kept rebuilding. Isma’il I remodelled and redecorated it around 1319, Muhammad V carried out extensive work during his two reigns between 1354 and 1391, and Yusuf III reworked the southern sections in the 15th century. The result by 1492 was a layered building where almost no wall was purely one reign’s work.

Water was the engineering that made the whole thing possible, and it came from a long way off. The Acequia Real draws from the Darro about 6.1 kilometres east of the Alhambra, with the Acequia del Tercio feeding the upper gardens.

Christian ownership after 1492 brought the usual retrofits. In 1494 an upper storey was added to the northern pavilion of the Patio de la Acequia, and the Patio de la Sultana next door was completely redesigned in the 16th century, its arcade built between 1584 and 1586. The 19th century added the Romantic Pavilion of 1836, put up on the probable site of the former Muslim prayer hall at the top of the Water Stairway, and a great deal of whitewash. Théophile Gautier, visiting in the 1840s, complained that “nothing now remains but some arcades and some large panels of arabesques, unfortunately plastered over with layers of whitewash”.

Almost everything green here is younger than a century. Torres Balbás laid out the northern part of the Jardines Nuevos in 1931, including a rose-bush labyrinth; Prieto Moreno designed the southern gardens, finished in 1951, with walls of clipped cypress and a large cruciform pool. An open-air theatre followed in 1952. These are the spaces most visitors cross before they reach anything Nasrid at all.

That decision explains the strange status of the place. The plan is Nasrid, the walls are a stack of five centuries of repair, and the planting is a 20th-century idea of what a Nasrid garden looked like. The listing of 1984 froze the mixture in place, and conservation since has mostly meant keeping a heavily visited hillside garden alive rather than restoring it to any one date.

Visiting

Opening hours are simple and they are the complex’s, not the garden’s: 08:30 to 20:00 daily from 1 April to 14 October, 08:30 to 18:00 daily from 15 October to 31 March, closed on 25 December and 1 January. Only the Nasrid Palaces carry a fixed half-hour entry slot. The Generalife, the gardens and the Alcazaba can be visited at any point during the day, and your ticket is valid all day, so you can walk out for lunch and come back.

The Generalife sits at the far end of the site from the Alhambra’s own palaces, so most people arrive here having already crossed the Cypress promenade, the Secano and the San Francisco gardens, all of which the same ticket covers. The route through the estate itself runs uphill and one way: lower gardens, palace courtyards, upper gardens, exit.

Lower gardens and the Jardines Nuevos

The first stretch is entirely 20th century, and worth knowing that in advance so you do not mistake it for the old estate. Cypress hedges clipped into walls, a long cruciform pool and a rose labyrinth, laid out by Torres Balbás from 1931 and Prieto Moreno up to 1951, with the open-air theatre of 1952 off to one side. It is pleasant, shaded in parts, and the last easy walking you will get.

Patio de la Acequia

Past a small entry courtyard the path opens into the Patio de la Acequia, 12.8 by 48.7 metres, the core of the palace. The northern pavilion has a portico of five arches leading to the Salón Regio, with carved stucco and Arabic inscriptions, and the mirador tower on its north side over the Albaicín. The southern pavilion is two storeys and much less well preserved. Stand at the north end and look back down the channel: the flowerbeds are modern, but the axis, the proportions and the position of the water are all original.

Patio de la Sultana and the Water Stairway

The Patio de la Sultana sits above the main courtyard. Its design is post-Nasrid, the arcade dating from 1584 to 1586, so treat it as a Renaissance garden with a Moorish plan underneath. Above it is the Escalera del Agua, the Water Stairway: four flights of steps whose stone handrails are themselves open channels, water running down the length of both sides, with small circular terraces and fountains between the flights. At the top stands the Romantic Pavilion of 1836.

From the high gardens the route drops back down the Paseo de las Adelfas, the oleander walk, and out towards the exit. There are toilets inside the Generalife and baby-change facilities on the Paseo de los Nogales, which is useful because there is nothing of the kind between here and the entrance pavilion. Ninety minutes covers the whole loop at a pace that lets you sit down twice.

Tips

• Book online in advance at tickets.alhambra-patronato.es. Advance sales close at 23:59 the day before the visit, one person can hold a maximum of 10 tickets per bank card per month, and purchases are final: no date changes, no time changes, no refunds.

• If the Nasrid Palaces are sold out, the 12.73 euro Gardens and Generalife ticket often is not, and it still gets you the Generalife, the Alcazaba with the Torre de la Vela, the Partal and the San Francisco gardens. The full complex ticket is 22.27 euros; a night visit to the gardens and Generalife alone is 8.48 euros.

• Tickets are personal and non-transferable. Carry the photo ID you booked with, and carry the certificate too if you claimed a reduction: EU residents over 65, Youth Card holders and visitors with a disability of 33 per cent or more must show proof at the ticket office or pay the full price.

• Children under 12 go free but still need a ticket, and it has to be booked at the same time as the adults’. Under-3s can get theirs at the ticket office on the day.

• Bags over 40 by 40 centimetres are refused at the gate. Free lockers are available at the access pavilion and at the Puerta del Vino on presentation of the day’s ticket, but stock is limited and they go early.

• Photography is allowed without flash and without tripods, monopods or any other stabilising rig. That rule is enforced, and the Patio de la Acequia is where staff enforce it.

• No food or drink inside the monument and no smoking anywhere, including outdoors. Eating is allowed at the Plaza de los Aljibes, the gardens facing the cannons and the Plaza de la Alhambra by the entrance pavilion; vending machines sit at the entrance pavilion, the service building by the Puerta del Vino and the car park.

• Walking up from town, the three routes are Cuesta Gomérez from Plaza Nueva, Cuesta del Realejo from Plaza del Realejo, and Cuesta del Rey Chico, known locally as the Cuesta de los Chinos, from the Paseo de los Tristes. City buses C30, C32 and C35 run up instead, and the monument car park holds 360 vehicles and is guarded around the clock.

• The Patronato does not supply guides, only audio guides, so anything sold as an official Alhambra guided tour is a private operator. Wheelchairs can be hired at the entrance pavilion subject to availability, with ID and a form.