Click
here to request info about property for sale in Granada
Spain.
Granada
is a city and the capital of the province of Granada, in the community of
Andalucia, Spain. It is situated at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains,
at the confluence of two rivers, Darro and Genil, at an elevation of 738 metres
above sea level. The Alhambra, a famous Moorish citadel and palace, is in
Granada. It is the most remarkable item of the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian
historical legacy that makes Granada a hot spot among cultural and tourist
cities in Spain. For more information about property
for sale in Spain in or near Granada then please contact us.
Granada is also well-known within Spain due to its prestigious university
and, nowadays, exhuberant night-life (though in the 1920s Federico García
Lorca described the granadinos as "the worst bourgeoisie in Spain").
In fact, it is said that it is one of the three best cities for college students
(the other two are Salamanca and Santiago de Compostela).
The city has been inhabited from the dawn of history. There was an Ibero-Celtic settlement here, which made contact in turn with Phoenecians, Carthagenians and Greeks. By the 5th century BCE, the Greeks had established a colony which they named "Elybirge". Under Roman rule, in the early centuries CE, this name had become "Ilíberis". The Visigoths maintained the importance of the city as a centre of both ecclesiastical and civil administration and also established it as a military stronghold.
A Jewish community established itself in what was effectively a suburb of the city, called "Gárnata" or "Gárnata al-yahud" (Granada of the Jews). It was with the help of this community that Moorish forces under Tariq ibn-Ziyad first took the city in 711, though it was not fully secured until 713. They gave it the name "Ilbira", the remaining Christian community calling this "Elvira", and it became the capital of a province of the Caliphate of Cordoba. Civil conflicts that wracked the Caliphate in the early 11th century led to the destruction of the city in 1010. In the subsequent reconstruction, the suburb of Gárnata was incorporated in the city, and the modern name in fact derives from this. With the arrival of the Zirid dynasty in 1013, Granada became an independent kingdom. By the end of the 11th century, the city had spread across the Darro to reach what is now the site of the Alhambra.
The name Alhambra, signifying in Arabic the red, is probably derived from the colour of the sun-dried tapia, or bricks made of fine gravel and clay, of which the outer walls are built. Some authorities, however, hold that it commemorates the red flare of the torches by whose light the work of construction was carried on nightly for many years; others associate it with the name of the founder, Mahomet Ibn Al Ahmar; and others derive it from the Arabic Dar al Amra, House of the Master. The palace was built chiefly between 1248 and 1354, in the reigns of Al Ahmar and his successors; but even the names of the principal artists employed are either unknown or doubtful.
The splendid arabesques of the interior are ascribed, among other kings, to Yusef I, Mohamed V, Ismail I, etc. After the Christian conquest of the city in 1492, the conquerors began to alter the Alhambra. The open work was filled up with whitewash, the painting and gilding effaced, the furniture soiled, torn or removed. Charles V (1516–1556) rebuilt portions in the Renaissance style of the period, and destroyed the greater part of the winter palace to make room for a Renaissance-style structure which has never been completed. Philip V (1700–1746) Italianised the rooms, and completed his palace right in the middle of what had been the Moorish building. He ran up partitions which blocked up whole apartments.
In subsequent centuries under Spanish authorities,
Moorish art was further defaced; and in 1812 some of the towers were blown
up by the French under Count Sebastiani, while the whole buildings narrowly
escaped the same fate. Napoleon had tried to blow up the whole complex. Just
before his plan was carried out, a crippled soldier who secretly wanted the
plan of Napoleon — his commander — to fail, defused the explosives
and thus saved the Alhambra for posterity. In 1821 an earthquake caused further
damage. The work of restoration undertaken in 1828 by the architect Jose Contreras
was endowed in 1830 by Ferdinand VII; and after the death of Contreras in
1847, it was continued with fair success by his son Rafael (d. 1890), and
his grandson Mariano.
Error! The codelock file is missing...