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Story & Photography by Susan McKee
Like countless visitors before me to a plateau rising above an ancient town in southern Spain, I stood in the Alhambra, listening for ghosts. Here, for centuries, Muslim kings were protected by a fortified city. Its walls, made of bricks forged from the ruddy clay of the region, gave the outpost its name – Alhambra means “the red”.
 The fortress looks over Granada, a city with many layers of history. At this place, the last of the great Moorish kingdoms fell captive to the Christian Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula. Still, it has the best preserved ruins of the almost 800 years when Islam was the dominant religion of Spain.
Looking out over the rooftops, I could see the Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance. Although I could discern no traces of Islam, news reports confirmed that a mosque had just opened in the city, reflecting its increasingly multicultural population in the new Spain, a thriving part of the Euro zone.
Granada was the last city-state taken in the Christian reconquest, starved into submission after a six-month siege. The last Muslim ruler, Boabdil, surrendered his kingdom to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella on January 2, 1492, at the beginning of a most auspicious year for Spain.
 Later that same year, in the halls of the Alhambra, these most Roman Catholic of European monarchs listened to Christopher Columbus outline his vision for sailing west to reach the Spice Islands. With his success, Spain would gain untold riches, imperial power and countless souls to Christianize.
It was also here, in 1492, that those same monarchs issued the Alhambra Decree expelling the Jews from Spain.
The echoes of the Moors are impossible to hear in the Alhambra today. Even in the early weeks of spring, tourists from around the world filled Granada. While admission to the palace complex is by timed ticket (to control the crowds), the surrounding gardens and walkways of the historic redoubt are bustling with activity at all hours of the day. Bus tours of school children and senior citizens vie with groups of backpackers and solitary strollers to check out the sights, jostling for photogenic vistas.
The city itself was founded by the Greeks in the fifth century BCE. They called their small settlement between the Darro and Genil rivers Elibyrge. By the time the Romans took over, the name morphed into Illiberis.
 Muslim forces under Tariq ibn-Ziyad captured the town – then called Elvira – from the Visigoths in 711. After a series of Moorish rulers, by the 13th century, the Nasrid dynasty found stability by aligning itself with the Christian kingdom of Castile. The resulting peace was enough to spark a construction bonanza resulting in the now familiar complex of palaces and gardens – an area designated a UNESCO World Heritage site back in the 1980s. Moorish rule in that part of Europe ended in 1492, when Ferdinand and Isabella captured Granada.
Centuries of history intrude when contemplating the past, however. The Alhambra with its high walls and thirteen gates has been altered, renovated, remodeled and changed over the centuries. Alcazaba, the garrison area, is mostly vacant with only the ramparts serving to remind visitors of its defensive purpose. The palace, allowed to decay over the years, gradually became a warren of private dwellings before being haphazardly reconstructed and partially restored in modern times.
Even now, the Alhambra doesn’t look much like it did when the Nasrids ruled – for example, they preferred their decorative water to be still and 19th century European fashion demanded fountains (which remain).
In the 16th century, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella) built an enormous palace on the hilltop, partly obliterating the earlier Moorish construction. Churches replaced mosques both in the Alhambra and in the residential areas below the citadel. In the early 19th Century, the Duke of Wellington himself ordered trees to be planted on once-bare defensive hillsides. Historians bemoan the long neglect, willful vandalism and sometimes ill-judged restoration attempts.
 Yet, as I stood in the pale off-white Hall of the Ambassadors – where Columbus is said to have met Ferdinand and Isabella in the spring of 1492 – there remained a hint of the grandeur of the Islamic era. All around me were the ruffles and flourishes of Moorish decoration – the graceful Arabesques, colorful tiles and stucco calligraphy. Even without the original stained glass and gilt trimmings, the room is impressive, with bright sunlight filtered by the myriad openings in the walls. Far above me were the 8,017 separate pieces of wood forming a most astonishingly intricate mosaic ceiling representing the seven heavens.
In all this magnificence, Columbus met with his potential royal backers, who were still flush with their final victory over the infidels. Here, in the former sultan’s Hall of the Ambassadors, the Genoan pleaded his case for sailing west to find the spices of the east.
Here, the Catholic Monarchs – minds focused on expanding Christianity – promised to underwrite his great adventure. From the royal precincts of the last Moorish kingdom acquired in the Reconquista, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and his wife, Queen Isabella of Castile, laid the foundations for Spain’s golden era and far flung empire.
Here, also, los Reyes Católicos issued the Alhambra Decree on March 31, 1492, ordering the expulsion of all Jews from Spain and its territories and possessions by July 31, 1492 – coincidentally the day that Columbus set sail for what was to become America.
 After I left the Moors’ palace, embellished with all the tightly controlled flourishes of Nasrid architectural detail, I turned toward the stolid Renaissance palace of Charles V. The official story is that this immensely powerful European emperor saved the Moorish structures from certain destruction by choosing this location for a palace – but, truth be told, he demolished some structures even as he preserved others. The unusual rectangular building surrounds a circular opening with two stories of colonnaded open hallways. Inside are two unremarkable museums.
Adjacent to the Alhambra is another, smaller plateau holding the Palacio de Generalife (a corruption of the Arabic name of Jennat al Arif, “Garden of the Architect”). This was the “country estate” of the Nasrid rulers of Granada. Its location on the Hill of the Sun was just high enough to benefit from cooling breezes in the hot summers. Stretched out below is the residential district of the Albaycín district, a rich repository, even now, of Moorish vernacular architecture.
 In later centuries, Granada retreated to the background of Spanish history. What’s left of earlier eras seems to owe as much to neglect as preservation efforts. Most of the Roman Catholic history is found at the foot of the Alhambra, where this bustling modern city is rapidly expanding into the countryside.
Ferdinand and Isabella commissioned a royal chapel for their final resting place, and what an extravagant setting it is. The altarpiece is an enormous wall-sized tableau combining piety with politics – figures portray scenes from the Bible and from the Reconquista all framed in gilt and embellished with jewels. In front of the altar are two enormous white Cararra marble cenotaphs: one for los Reyes Católicos and the other for their daughter, Juana and her husband, Phillip the Fair (who succeeded them on the throne) – these are the parents of Charles V. (The actual caskets rest in an open vault beneath the floor.)
Ferdinand and Isabella’s fifth child is perhaps more familiar to English-speakers. She was Catherine of Aragon, first wife to Henry VIII of England – the proximate cause of her husband’s split with the Church of Rome.
The royal chapel is next to the Cathedral of the Annunciation. Designed in 1529 at the peak of the Spanish Renaissance by Diego de Siloé, the complex structure took 181 years to complete. The main façade was redesigned with Baroque elements by  Alonso Cano in 1667, but the two large towers he planned were never built.
In Granada, I stayed just a few blocks from the cathedral at the lovely AC Palacio de Santa Paula. A renovated convent, the oldest parts of the building date to its 14th century origins as a Moorish house. Although the four-star hotel is located right on Gran Vía de Colón, one of the busiest streets in town, my room overlooked an enclosed courtyard and I heard none of the traffic.
Pomegranates, a royal favorite, are used as a decorative motif everywhere in Granada – not surprising, since the name of the town means “pomegranate” in Spanish. Even the traffic barriers are topped with the fruit. (It’s said that the vegetal flourish capping the dark red fruit reminded rulers of a crown.)
© December 2008 LuxuryWeb Magazine. All rights reserved.
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