1. Palace of Charles V2. Apartments of Emperor Charles V: Queen’s Rooms and Closet3. Church of Santa María de la Alhambra45. Generalife (Renaissance Gardens)6. Walled precinct (Bastions – Tendilla Cistern – Gate of the Seven Floors and Gate Of Justice)7. Basin of Charles V8. Gate of the Pomegranates – Russet Towers and Ravelin9. Plaza Nueva – Chancellery10. Church of Santa Ana11. Castril House12. Monastery of Santa Isabel La Real – Palace of Dar Al-Horra13. Hospital of San Juan de Dios14. Royal Monastery of San Jerónimo15. Cathedral16. The Madrasa17. Ecclesiastical Curia18. Plaza de Bibarrambla, Alcaicería and Zacatín19. Imperial Church of San Matías20. Casa de los Tiros21. Royal Chapel and Merchants’ Exchange
Convent of San Francisco (now Parador Nacional)
The former convent of San Francisco was established by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1494 on the premises of a Nasrid palace, the Palace of the Infantes. It was built in the 16th century and occupied at first by a community of Clarissine nuns before passing later to monks of the same professed order of St Francis. It is worth noting that the construction of the convent modified the use of the surrounding space, since the end of the Calle Real Alta was adapted to circumvent the convent and the adjoining terrain was turned into kitchen gardens for the community.
After the disentailments of Mendizábal and Madoz, the Franciscans abandoned the monastery in 1835, and it was used in the 19th century as a barracks. The architect Leopoldo Torres Balbás saved it from ruin between 1927 and 1936, converting it into a residence for landscape painters. In 1949 it was excavated by Francisco Prieto Moreno, who found the hammam of the Muslim palace. This was integrated into the new building that houses the Parador de Turismo, a state-run hotel.
The convent is articulated around a two-storey Renaissance cloister with arches supported by marble columns. Preserved in it is part of the earlier Nasrid palace: the so-called Arab Hall and a belvedere with views over the Generalife, in front of which a cupola with stalactite work is preserved. It was beneath this cupola that the provisional tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella were laid, since the Catholic Monarchs were buried in this place until 1521, when they were transferred to the Royal Chapel. This increased the symbolic significance as a burial place of the church of the convent of San Francisco. The Mendoza family, patrons of the convent, used it to bury some of its members.
Owing to the formal similarities of the plasterwork with that found in the Two Sisters and Abencerrajes halls, some scholars have dated this decoration to the time of the monarch Mohammed V. It is in any case one of the most important examples of the survival of Nasrid motifs in 16th century architecture.
The occupation of one of the several Nasrid palaces in the Alhambra by a religious community is palpable proof of the reuse of sumptuous residential buildings, sometimes donated by Ferdinand and Isabella for analogous use after the conquest to noblemen who had fought in the war, and sometimes, as in this case, to the Seraphic Order of St Francis, held in special esteem by the Catholic Monarchs, as demonstrated by the fact that Queen Isabella was entombed inside it in 1504. It is highly significant that the religious space where she was buried preserves the decoration, vaulting and arches of what was once a belvedere of the Nasrid palace, just as the Catholic Monarchs installed a chapel in one of the side halls of the Court of the Lions. This shows that Islamic ornamentation was compatible with Christian religious uses, above all because the richness of oriental decoration was appreciated by the Catholic Monarchs, and doubtless by the western mentality in general (as reported by the traveller Jerónimo Münzer), as a symbol of power.
The location of the monastery at the central point of the palatial precinct is likewise a demonstration of the transformation of the old Nasrid town into a new Christian one, where the presence of a mendicant religious order like that of St Francis was virtually a requisite.
