Granada 1492: the Royal Chapel, the silk market and Realejo: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
1492, the Royal Chapel, the silk market, Charles V's city
After 1492 the Nasrid city was reused rather than erased: palaces became convents, a madrasa became the town hall, the bazaar became a guarded market and the great mosque gave way to a cathedral. Charles V's visit in 1526 brought an imperial church, and the University of Granada was founded that year.
The stops
This is not a single gate but a historic district at the heart of the city, named after King Philip IV, who came in through a gate of the old Muslim wall on 8 April 1624. It became the centre of Granada's social life in the 16th century: in 1515 it was decorated with the Catholic Monarchs' coat of arms, and in 1610 new symbols marked the end of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula. The Darro river ran through here until it was covered over in the 19th century.
Photo: PerryPlanet — Public domain This church began in a small mosque, and in 1526 Emperor Charles V visited and ordered a grander church on its present site, giving it the title Imperial. He was devoted to Saint Matthias because he was born on 24 February, the same day in 1525 his army beat the French at Pavia. The building, in the Mudéjar style with Gothic echoes, was finished in 1550.
Photo: SabrinaRP19 — CC BY-SA 4.0 This small palace is one of the earliest surviving Nasrid palace structures, used as a country house by the Nasrid rulers and believed to date from the reign of Muhammad II (1273 to 1302). It sits on a bastion of the old city wall, and its windows would have looked out over the Genil. After 1492 it became part of the Dominican convent of Santa Cruz, and at one time Tomás de Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor, occupied it.
Photo: R Prazeres — CC BY-SA 4.0 A 16th-century house bought by Gil Vázquez de Rengifo, one of the knights who took part in the conquest of Granada with the Catholic Monarchs. It stood on the old wall of the potters' quarter, which is why it looks like a fortress. Five life-size heroes, Hercules, Theseus, Mercury, Jason and Hector, stand on its front as if ready for battle, and the house is named for the pieces of artillery on its battlements.
Photo: carlos corzo — CC BY-SA 3.0 The Realejo, the quarter around you, was the Jewish quarter of Granada before the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. This small museum occupies a typical house here and recreates the life of the Sephardic Jews through everyday objects, city maps, a ceramic kitchen and a small Sephardic-style courtyard. It opened in 2013, the year Spain's government ruled to grant nationality to descendants of the Jews expelled after the Alhambra Decree, which the Catholic Monarchs signed in Granada.
Photo: avillaltal — CC BY-SA 4.0 Building began in 1537 to a design by Diego de Siloé, on ground that had held an earlier mosque, and the slender brick tower was built between 1561 and 1563. Juan Latino lies buried here: a former slave who gained the chair of grammar and Latin in Granada in 1556 and is widely recognised as the first African to hold an academic post in Europe. Mariana Pineda, the popular heroine executed under Ferdinand VII, was married in this church.
Photo: Melania21102009 — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Royal Chancellery was a court set up in Ciudad Real in 1494 and moved to Granada in 1505, and its authority covered the lands south of the river Tagus. The palace on Plaza Nueva was built between 1531 and 1587. The court was abolished in 1834, and the building is now the seat of the High Court of Justice of Andalusia.
Photo: PEPE GADEIRAS — CC BY-SA 4.0 Mariano Benlliure's bronze group shows Queen Isabella seated on her throne while Columbus bows on the steps before her. It was made for the 400th anniversary of Columbus's first voyage, but the queen regent refused to come to Granada, and the angry locals unveiled it themselves on 2 November 1892 amid riots. It was moved to this square in 1962, close to Isabella's tomb in the Royal Chapel.
Photo: goatsgreetings from Glasgow, Scotland — CC BY 2.0 This is the only funduq, a merchants' inn and warehouse, that survives from the Nasrid period in the Iberian Peninsula, and it is believed to date from before 1336. In 1494, after the fall of Granada, the Catholic Monarchs gave it to one of their lieutenants. It was then a theatre courtyard until at least 1593, and later a place to weigh and store coal, which gave it its present name, the Coal Yard.
Photo: Chabe01 — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Nasrid rulers owned this bazaar directly, and it was locked and watched at night; silk and other valuable goods were sold here and taxed at a higher rate. After the conquest of 1492 the crown kept it as a guarded market, and a plan of 1787 shows up to 152 shops. A fire destroyed it in 1843, and it was rebuilt smaller in a Neo-Moorish style.
Photo: Jesus Abizanda from Barbastro, Huesca, Spain — CC BY 2.0 Sultan Yusuf I founded this college in 1349, the only major madrasa known to have been built in al-Andalus. It kept running after the conquest until about 1500, when Cisneros had its library taken to Bib-Rambla square and burned, and King Ferdinand made the building the city hall. The small prayer room, covered in stucco, is the only part of the original building preserved in place.
Photo: Chabe01 — CC BY-SA 4.0 On 13 September 1504 Isabella and Ferdinand declared that they wished to be buried in Granada, the city they had conquered in 1492. The chapel was built between 1505 and 1517 in the Isabelline Gothic style, and in the centre of the transept lie their tombs, carved by Domenico Fancelli. The sacristy museum keeps the crown and sceptre of the Catholic Monarchs and a painting by Botticelli.
Photo: Heparina1985 — CC BY-SA 4.0 Work on the cathedral started in 1518 on the site of the city's main mosque, first under Enrique Egas, then from 1529 under Diego de Siloé. Siloé joined a Renaissance dome to a Gothic floor plan, with five naves and a circular main chapel instead of the usual apse. It took 181 years to build, and the two 81-metre towers in the plans were never completed.
Photo: Berthold Werner — CC BY-SA 3.0 The Jesuits began building this college in 1556, and the main doorway was only finished in 1717. After the Jesuits were expelled in 1767 it was given to the University of Granada, which King Charles I had created in 1526, and housed its central services. It is now the Law faculty, and a large portrait of Emperor Charles V presides over its ceremonial hall, where a 1998 restoration found a Second Republic hanging cloth hidden behind it.
Photo: Alberto-g-rovi — CC BY 3.0 Isabella and Ferdinand founded this monastery at Santa Fe during the siege of Granada, and the present buildings began in 1504 with Diego de Siloé as the main architect. The Great Captain, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, is buried in the crossing of the church with his wife. The second cloister housed Empress Isabella of Portugal on her wedding journey after she married Charles V.
Photo: Maksym Abramov — CC BY-SA 4.0
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