1. Palace of Charles V2. Apartments of Emperor Charles V: Queen’s Rooms and Closet3. Church of Santa María de la Alhambra4. Convent of San Francisco (now Parador Nacional)5. 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. Cathedral1617. Ecclesiastical Curia18. Plaza de Bibarrambla, Alcaicería and Zacatín19. Imperial Church of San Matías20. Casa de los Tiros21. Royal Chapel and Merchants’ Exchange
The Madrasa
The building known as the Palace of La Madraza, or the Yusufiya Madrasa, was founded by the Nasrid sultan Yusuf I in the year 1349. A place of higher education in theology, jurisprudence and philosophy, along the same lines as the Merinid madrasas in North Africa, it is the only state centre of this type known in al-Andalus. In 1501, after the arrival of Ferdinand and Isabella, the building underwent major reconstruction and was converted into the Casa del Cabildo, the seat of the municipal government, where the city's notables would gather to carry out the administrative tasks for which they were then responsible. The greatest modifications to the building were made in the 18th century, and it was used until 1858 as the City Hall, which was transferred in that year to its current location in Plaza del Carmen.
In the centre of the building is a courtyard with lateral rooms around it, some originally containing the sleeping quarters of the teachers and students and others destined for teachng (iwan) and collective prayer. All that is preserved of this is an oratory, partially rebuilt in the 19th century, on a square plan with an octagonal cupola.
The Baroque façade is the result of the 18th century interventions, as is the current structure of the courtyard and the staircase to the main floor. Preserved on the latter, however, is an exceptional Mudejar timber ceiling over the Great Hall, known as the Hall of the Twenty-Four Knights.
Today, the building houses the cultural activities of the University of Granada and of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Granada.
The Madrasa, a building of Islamic origin that was devoted to religious higher education, is a clear example of the appropriation of edifices for public use by the Catholic Monarchs, who donated it to the city as the seat of local power in the form of the Cabildo or City Council. Located opposite the Royal Chapel and the Cathedral, the former religious nerve centre of Nasrid Granada remained in the hands of the civil and religious powers of the new State. Although the Madrasa was refurbished to adapt it to its administrative function, it nevertheless retained its structural nucleus around its central courtyard, even preserving the Islamic oratory of the iwan type characteristic of madrasas from the 14th century onwards, though hidden or masked by its transformation into a chapel in a process of conversion that was habitual with religious buildings. The Great Hall on the main floor was roofed with a timber framework of traditional Moorish carpentry, though decorated with ornamental Renaissance paintings in another of the "classic" combinations of cultures so common in Granada, and with a significant legend alluding to the Christian conquerors. Subsequent rebuilding hid the external appearance of the building under a Baroque ornamental "mask".
Text: INSCRIPTION ON THE ROOF OF THE COUNCIL CHAMBER: "The most high, magnificent and most powerful lords Don Ferdinand and Doña Isabella, our king and queen, won this most noble and great city of Granada and its kingdom by force of arms in two days of the month of January in the year of the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ fourteen hundred and ninety-two."
