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Power and faith: stucco work with Arabic calligraphy adorns many walls of the Alhambra.
Some inscriptions praise emirs, others quote from the Koran
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Photo: MARCELO DEL POZO / © MARCELO DEL POZO/Reuters/Corbis
As soon as you show your passport or ID card, the clock starts ticking.
You book online in advance, and the ID document serves as a kind of visa: You then have exactly three hours to explore Granada's famous Alhambra castle complex.
Admission is via a central lock and only at fixed times.
If you miss the slot, you have to stay outside.
There is no goodwill, because the crowd is pressing: since the number of daily visitors was limited, only about 2.4 million people are drawn to one of the most famous building complexes in Spain every year.
But even that's enough for slow-moving foot traffic – the Alhambra is the country's most-visited tourist attraction.
No wonder.
The sheer dimensions of the complex, the breathtaking splendor of the palaces and gardens justify every superlative and make the visit program a real challenge.
The Alhambra is the most monumental testimony of al-Andalus: from 711 to 1492, for almost 800 years, Muslims ruled parts of the Iberian Peninsula.
First a province of the Umayyad Caliphate emerged here, then an emirate that became independent and rose to the Caliphate of Córdoba;
later it became a number of so-called Taifa petty kingdoms and provinces of North African Berber princes.
History books as well as tourism brochures praise al-Andalus as a prime example of the peaceful coexistence of all religions ("convivencia"), as a haven of learning and craftsmanship on the edge of barbaric medieval Europe.
In this narrative, the supposedly peaceful al-Andalus seems like the model of a better world, the Alhambra like a stone turned “It could have been like this” if the Reconquista, Crusades and Clash of Cultures had not given history a brutal twist.
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