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Stories, history and food traditions from Granada (Page 3)

Long-form editorial pieces written by resident correspondents: cultural deep-dives, the origins of local dishes, and the people and traditions that shape everyday life in Granada.

Present-day exterior of Santa María de la Alhambra on the former Alhambra royal mosque site, warm stone walls and bell tower seen from Calle Real in late afternoon light

Alhambra Royal Mosque: From Nasrid Mosque to Santa María

James Walker

The Alhambra royal mosque was completed in 1305 and later replaced by Santa María. Read its plan, surviving bath and difference from Granada's city mosque.

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Split view inspired by Alhambra 19th century restoration, with coloured yesería and alicatado details beside a restrained conservation drawing in warm archive light

Alhambra 19th Century Restoration: What Contreras Changed

James Walker

Rafael Contreras renewed parts of the Alhambra in the 1800s. See how Leopoldo Torres Balbás later changed the method through conservation and restraint.

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The Pico Veleta telescope's white 30-metre dish glowing at dusk on the Sierra Nevada ridge, steel alt-azimuth mount visible against a violet sky, snow patches scattered across the summit scree

Pico Veleta Telescope: Granada's Radio Astronomy Peak

James Walker

The IRAM 30-metre telescope on Pico Veleta reads millimetre radio waves invisible to the eye — and helped capture the first-ever images of a black hole.

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Golden-lit muqarnas dome of the Sala de la Barca inside the Alhambra's Comares Palace, the room gutted by the Alhambra fire of 1890 and rebuilt by 1965

Alhambra Fire of 1890: A Disaster Nearly Forgotten

James Walker

Fire gutted the Alhambra's Sala de la Barca on the night of 15 September 1890. Here's what burned, who was blamed, and how 75 years rebuilt the ceiling.

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Golden-hour view across the Alhambra's Nasrid Palace courtyards and reflecting pools, a Romantic-era painterly atmosphere evoking the 19th-century pilgrimage that shaped today's Alhambra crowds

Alhambra Crowds: How the World Fell for Granada's Palace

James Walker

Alhambra crowds aren't accidental. A ruined fortress became a Romantic pilgrimage, then the world's most tightly visitor-managed site, capped since 2003.

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Enrique Morente performing flamenco cante jondo, an intense weathered singer mid-song under warm amber stage light in an intimate Granada tablao, Albaicín's whitewashed walls visible through a doorway behind him

Enrique Morente: Granada's Flamenco Revolutionary

James Walker

Enrique Morente went from Albaicín choirboy to flamenco's most radical voice, reviving cante, setting Lorca to song, and fusing it with rock on Omega (1996).

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Nasrid gold-and-cobalt lustreware Vase of the Gazelles, a tall globular storage jar with wing-shaped loop handles, a confronted pair of gazelles in gold lustre on the upper body, dense vegetal arabesque and kufic inscription bands, narrow flat base, displayed under gallery lighting in the Alhambra Museum

Vase of the Gazelles: The Alhambra Vase That Never Left

James Walker

The Vase of the Gazelles is the only Alhambra Vase that never left the complex, now displayed in Room V of the Alhambra Museum after six centuries on site.

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Facsimile pages of the Capitulations of Santa Fe glowing in candlelight beside Ferdinand and Isabella's wax seal, Santa Fe camp near Granada

Capitulations of Santa Fe: The Deal That Sent Columbus

James Walker

Fifteen weeks after Granada fell, Columbus signed away a tenth of the New World at a Granada siege camp, and the crown's own coffers weren't what paid for it.

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Storm clouds gathering over the Alcazaba's Torre de la Vela in Granada on Día de la Toma, the royal standard raised against a darkening winter sky, evoking the ceremony's controversy and layered history

The Festival of the Toma: Granada's Most Controversial Holiday

James Walker

Granada's Día de la Toma marks 1492's surrender, a promise the Crown broke within a decade. Vox now rallies there each January while activists demand it end.

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Weathered Granada city walls of the Zirid circuit rising above Albaicín rooftops, a rammed-earth tower catching late-afternoon light against a pale sky

Granada City Walls: Tracing the Zirid Circuit

James Walker

Granada's oldest walls aren't at the Alhambra. Trace the 11th-century Zirid circuit through the Albaicín: surviving towers, vanished gates, Puerta de Elvira.

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Samuel Ha-Nagid depicted as vizier and army commander of Zirid Granada, an 11th-century Jewish statesman in Moorish court dress with a sword and inkwell

Samuel Ha-Nagid: Granada's Warrior Poet-Vizier

James Walker

Samuel ha-Nagid fled Córdoba in 1013, rose from a Málaga spice shop to command Granada's Muslim army as vizier, and helped define Hebrew's Golden Age poetry.

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Interior of the Basilica de San Juan de Dios in Granada at golden hour, the gilded Baroque retablo mayor glowing amber, ornate gold-leaf columns and painted ceiling frescoes framing the altar, a hushed and empty nave conveying centuries of devotion to the hospital saint

San Juan de Dios: The Saint Who Built Granada's Hospitals

James Walker

Before sainthood, Juan Ciudad was a soldier, a beggar, and an asylum inmate in Granada — until a 1537 breakdown founded a hospital order still running today.

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