Alhambra

Granada

The Alhambra is a fortress and palace complex built chiefly between 1238 and 1358 as the seat of the Nasrid dynasty, the last Islamic kingdom in Western Europe. Its reddish walls give the site its name, Arabic for red fort. The Comares Palace and Court of the Lions took shape under Yusuf I and Muhammad V before the Christian conquest of 1492 ended Nasrid rule.

The fountain at the centre of the Court of the Lions rests on the backs of twelve carved marble lions, fed by the Acequia Real, a gravity-fed canal that Nasrid engineers ran six kilometres from the Darro river to supply the whole palace city without a single pump. Muhammad V built the courtyard in the 14th century as the private core of the palace, ringed by muqarnas ceilings carved into stalactite-like plaster. Sabika hill held a fortress two centuries before the Nasrids arrived: Samuel ibn Naghrillah, the Jewish vizier who effectively ran the Zirid kingdom of Granada, built his own palace here in the early 11th century, of which nothing survives. Charles V later demolished part of the Nasrid palace's private apartments and baths to build a Renaissance palace beside it, a square building wrapped around a circular courtyard left roofless for more than three centuries before it was finally finished in 1967. A gunpowder explosion in a nearby house destroyed one of the Court of the Lions' original muqarnas ceilings in 1590; the Baroque plaster ceiling that replaced it in 1714 still stands.

From riders

What you'll see

Square watchtowers and battlements run along the crest of Sabika hill above Granada's rooftops, with the snow-capped ridgeline of the Sierra Nevada rising directly behind them for much of the year.

Practical

Entry to the Nasrid Palaces is timed and capped at 300 visitors per 30-minute slot within a 6,600 daily limit; tickets go on sale up to three months ahead and morning slots often sell out weeks in advance.

Checked 13 August 2026

Nasrid palaceIslamic architectureUnesco heritageLiterary landmark