Alhambra Granada Mezquita Cordoba Andalucia popular tourism tourist attractions

Andalucia 10 most popularly tourism & tourist attractions. 1-2

Andalucia is, perhaps, the most quintessentially Spanish region of Spain, a land of vibrant colour and fiery passion typified by a rich flamenco heritage, bullfighting and hours riding traditions and the mystique of a Moorish past that has bequeathed a legacy of stunning architect cultural treasures. Nothing about Andalucia is low key – from her rugged sierras to her dazzling white villages to the passionate nature of her people – and when the heat is on in August, she burns white hot like a sunspot caught under a magnifying glass. As the region’s most famous poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, wrote; “The Andalucia sun stats singing a fire song and all creation trembles at the sound”

In the holiday months of August, forget the golf courses, shopping centres, Puerto Banus, Marbella night life. We highlight a selection of hot spots that inspired great creative, geniuses like Hemingway, Picasso, Washington Irving and Gerald Brenan and continue to conspire, today, to make Andalucia sing. This is a list of the 10 most popularly places in Andalucia that you shouldn’t miss.

1. The Alhambra, Granada.

The Sabika hill sits like a garland on Granada’s brow,
in which the stars would be entwined
and the Alhambra (Allah preserve it)
is the ruby set above that garland.
Ibn Zamrak, vizier to Muhammad V (1362-1391)

Allah did preserve the Alhambra and today the hillside palace-fortress of the Nasrid Sultans is probably the most romantic of all European monuments. A Western Taj Mahal, and one of the most visited sights in the world, the seductive lines of its architecture have moved great men to tears, not least the Arab ruler Boabdil who famously looked back and wept as Catholic monarchs Ferdiand and Isabel drove him from the cite during the Reconquest.

There are three distinct groups of buildings – the Alcazaba fortress, the Summer Palace and lush gardens of the Generalife which was designed to recreate paradise on earth, and the Royal Palace where the Patio de los Leones whit its fountain and cloisters has become the symbol of Granada. This was the harem that moved Washington Irving to write Tales of the Alhambra and of which he said, “The abode of beauty is her and if it had been inhabited but yesterday.”
Because it receives nearly 8.000 visitors a day, booking is a recommendation. The Palace is also open for floodlight evening tours in summer.

Other must-sees: Granada city, The Albaicin, surrounding the palace, the most characteristic ancient Moorish quarter surviving in Spain today. The Capilla Real, the stunning Gothic chapel built as a mausoleum to Ferdinand and Isabel.

2. The Mezquita, Cordoba.

"You have built what you or others might have built anywhere, but you have destroyed something unique in the world."
Carlos V. king of united Spain (1516-1556)

There words were spoken by the 16th century Spanish King on seeing the completion of the work he himself had sanctioned to build a cathedral bang in the centre of an Islamic mosque. Today the idea still seems incongruous although the church itself has its architectural points of beauty.

Everyone has seen photographs of La Mezquita´s arcades of stylized, red and white palm tree pillars that resemble a petrified forest, but noting prepares the visitor for the architectural perfection of Cordoba’s most famous landmark, a building of extraordinary mystical and aesthetical power. As in Moorish times, the mosque is reached through the delightful Patio de los Naranjos, a classic Islamic courtyard planted with orange trees and watered by fountains which are copies of those once used for ritual purification before prayer.

The mosque’s majestic exterior walls and decorative latticed gateways dominate the city, conveying an overwhelming sense of Cordoba’s history as the centre of a vast and powerful empire. The Mezquita is open daily, but is particularly busy on Sundays when it is open in the afternoon, from 2-7 pm in summer.

Other must-sees: The old Jewish quarter outside the Mezquita walls. The ruins of Medina Azahara, a 10th century Moorish palace evoking the grandeur of the Cordoba caliphate.


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See here number 6-10 of Andalucia 10 most popularly tourist attractions.