To the Mexuar Palace

In the past few days we have been on two more trips - one on our own to a small fishing village (Armacão de Pera) a short distance to the west of Albufeira and an organized excursion on Easter Sunday to an interesting Easter Sunday flower procession in a village about 40 minutes east of here (São Brás de Alportel) - and I will post a bit about each of these a bit later. As we have been busy I have not had time to prepare a new post on the Alhambra, so I am going to wing it a bit here to get at least one more posted before we leave on Wednesday morning.

So, from the Generalife we walked through the gardens to enter the Alhambra by the recently built bridge near the water tower. The tower was built to protect the aqueduct which runs past the tower into the Alhambra.

Don't forget that you can see a larger and better image by clicking on any of them.

We passed through the remains of the medina, which was destroyed by Napoleon's forces when they left Spain in the early 1800's, then along part of the cypress walk toward the palaces.

To the north the tower of the Convent of St. Francis is a prominent landmark within the Alhambra.

After passing the Placeta de Calle Reil (Park on the Royal Street) we passed the Hotel America (yes, there are a couple of hotels in the Alhambra and this one is a one star hotel - though apparently still a very expensive place to stay!).

To the right is the Church of St. Mary of the Alhambra, (built by the Christians on the site of the Muslim Mosque). You can see a view of the bell tower in photos in the earlier post on Generalife.

Beyond the Church of St. Mary of the Alhambra , is the unfinished palace of Carlos V also begun after the Christians conquered Granada and drove the Muslims out of Granada and the Alhambra (a bit more about this "palace" of Carlos V later). In this area we visited a shop where they make replicas/reproductions of furniture and other "palace-hold" materials used by the Muslim royalty, employing methods (discovered after careful research) similar to those of the artisans and craftsmen in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Past the shop and the palace of Carlos V is a large plaza (the Plaza de los Aljibes) beyond which, at the most western end of the Alhambra, is the Alcazaba. This photo shows two towers of the Alcazaba, the original fortress and the oldest part of the Alhambra. The tower on the right is the Torre del Homenaje, (the Keep) the oldest tower in the Alcazaba.

We went into the Alcazaba briefly on our way to the Palace of the Mexuar and, as we passed through quickly, I recall almost nothing of the fortress area except the plaque acknowledging Jose Garcia who saved the Alhambra by putting a stop to Napoleon's plan to demolish the entire city.

At this wall (right) we were told that it was built by the Christians soon after they conquered the region. As they were afraid the Moors would return they were in a hurry to erect defensive fortifications so they used all materials they had at hand including grave stones from the Muslim cemetery.

A look back at the towers of the Alcazaba from the entry to the Mexuar Palace. The Mexuar is the oldest of the three major remaining palaces, and the most modified; it seems almost nothing of the original palace remains.

Though some of Hall of the Mexuar is beautifully decorative, there is little that is original in this room.  After the conquest, the Christians installed their chapel here and changed the shape and character of the room extensively. I didn't take many photos in this Hall of the Mexuar,  except these decorative structures, and have none of the entire room.

The oratory (left) is a room which is at a different angle from the rest of the Mexuar and that difference is because it was built to face Mecca, suggesting that it was a room for prayer. The lower windows look out on the Albaicin which I will say a bit about later.

The extremes of light and dark in the oratory made it impossible to get well exposed photos so, in order to see the upper walls I have had to show them separately.

Then to the so called "Golden Room", a kind of ante room to the Courtyard of the Mexuar in the photo to the left. Below is a slight larger view of the entry from the Oratory area looking from the Courtyard of the Mexuar. The Golden Room is the narrow area between the tall arch and the lower one with two windows above.

This photo looks passed the arches, through the space of both the Golden Room and the Courtyard of the Mexuar, to the Facade of the Comares Palace, the one we visited next.

The Facade is certainly attractive (see photo right) but it gives no indication of what is inside and, we were told, what we will see beyond the Facade of the Comares, unlike the Mexuar, is all original.

The best is still to come in the Comares Palace and the Palace of the Lions.