Granada Travel Guide: What to See, Eat and When to Visit

Granada sits in the eastern half of Andalusia, in southern Spain, draped across three hills at roughly 700 metres above sea level where the little Darro river joins the broader Genil. Behind it rise the Sierra Nevada, the highest mountains on the Spanish mainland, so the city spends much of the year looking up at snow while orange trees flower in its squares. It is about 130 kilometres inland from Málaga and the Costa del Sol, a drive of roughly an hour and a half; Seville lies some 250 kilometres to the west and Madrid around 420 kilometres to the north. That position, hard against the mountains but within reach of the coast, is exactly why the city mattered for so long.

Granada was the last capital of Muslim Spain. When the rest of Al-Andalus had fallen, the Nasrid emirs held this one kingdom for two and a half centuries, and they spent that time building the Alhambra on the ridge above the town. The city passed to the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, and Ferdinand and Isabella chose to be buried here rather than in Castile, which tells you what the prize was worth to them. The result is a city where a Renaissance cathedral, a Moorish palace city and a hillside of whitewashed lanes are all within a twenty-minute walk of each other. The Alhambra, the Generalife and the Albaicín quarter are inscribed together on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Palace Tours includes Granada on its escorted journeys through southern Spain, with guided access to the Alhambra arranged in advance.

What to see in Granada

• The Alhambra — The reason most travellers come. A walled city of fortress, palaces and gardens on the Sabika hill, with the Nasrid Palaces at its heart: the Court of the Myrtles with its long still pool, the Hall of the Ambassadors under a domed cedar ceiling of thousands of pieces, and carved stucco worked as fine as lace.
• The Court of the Lions — The most photographed courtyard in Spain, a forest of 124 slender marble columns around a fountain carried on twelve stone lions. It sits inside the Nasrid Palaces and is reached on the same timed ticket.
• The Generalife — The emirs’ summer estate just above the Alhambra, laid out as terraced gardens, clipped hedges and water channels. The Patio de la Acequia, with its arcing jets over a narrow canal, is the clearest surviving picture of what a medieval Andalusi garden felt like.
• The Albaicín — The old Moorish quarter on the hill facing the Alhambra: stepped lanes too narrow for cars, whitewashed walls, and cármenes, the walled houses with private gardens hidden behind them. Getting lost here for an hour is the point.
• Mirador de San Nicolás — The viewpoint at the top of the Albaicín, looking straight across the Darro valley at the Alhambra with the Sierra Nevada behind it. Late afternoon, when the walls turn the colour that gave the palace its name, is the moment to be there.
• The Royal Chapel and Cathedral — The Capilla Real holds the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella, their daughter Joanna and her husband Philip, under carved marble effigies, with the plain lead coffins visible in the crypt below. The cathedral next door is a vast, luminous Renaissance building in cool white and gold.
• Sacromonte — The cave quarter on the hill beyond the Albaicín, long home to Granada’s Roma community and the birthplace of the zambra, a flamenco form danced in the whitewashed cave houses. Several caves still stage nightly performances.
• El Bañuelo and the Corral del Carbón — Two quiet survivals of the Moorish city: an eleventh-century bathhouse beside the Darro with star-shaped vents in its vaults, and a fourteenth-century merchants’ inn off the main shopping street, the best preserved of its kind in Spain.

What to eat in Granada

Granada is the last great stronghold of the free tapa. Order a drink in most bars in the old centre and something to eat arrives with it, unasked and unbilled, and it gets more substantial with each round. Local plates to look for include habas con jamón, young broad beans fried with cured ham; remojón granadino, a salad of orange, salt cod, olives and onion that sounds unlikely and works completely; tortilla del Sacromonte, a rich omelette that traditionally uses offal; and the plato alpujarreño, a mountain fry-up of potatoes, egg, black pudding and ham from the villages of the Alpujarras. The cured ham of Trevélez, air-dried in one of the highest villages in Spain, is worth ordering on its own.

For something sweet, the pionono of Santa Fe is a small cylinder of syrup-soaked sponge topped with toasted cream, eaten in one or two bites. Convent bakeries around the city still sell biscuits and pestiños through a turntable in the wall. On Calderería Nueva, the stepped street below the Albaicín, teterías serve mint tea and Moroccan pastries in rooms full of lanterns. Granada also has its own wines from the high vineyards of the Contraviesa and the slopes south of the city, and tropical fruit — mango, custard apple, avocado — grown on the coast an hour away.

Shopping and crafts

The Alcaicería, the rebuilt lane of the old silk exchange beside the cathedral, is the place to start, though the real craft traditions run deeper. Taracea is Granada’s marquetry, geometric inlays of wood, bone and mother-of-pearl set into boxes, tables and chessboards, a technique carried straight over from the Nasrid workshops. Fajalauza pottery is the local ceramic, glazed white and painted in cobalt blue and green with pomegranates and birds — the pomegranate being the city’s emblem and its name. Add to that hand-loomed jarapa rugs from the Alpujarras, guitars from a handful of workshops that still build by hand, and leather, spices and teas from the bazaar streets.

Best time to visit

Spring and autumn are the clear winners. April to early June brings warm days, flowering courtyards and the drama of Semana Santa, followed by the Corpus Christi fair; September and October are settled and golden, with the summer crowds gone. High summer is genuinely hot, often well above 35 degrees in the afternoon, which makes the Alhambra’s gardens a morning or evening proposition. Winter in the city is mild and bright but cold after dark, and it is also ski season: the Sierra Nevada resort is less than an hour away and the runs are among the highest in Europe.

Good to know

• Book the Alhambra far ahead. Daily numbers are capped and tickets routinely sell out weeks in advance, especially the timed slot for the Nasrid Palaces. Entry is tied to a named ticket and you will be asked for the passport or ID used to buy it.
• Wear proper shoes. The Albaicín and Sacromonte are steep, cobbled and stepped, and the Alhambra itself involves a lot of walking on uneven ground.
• Use the little red minibuses. The C30, C31 and C32 lines climb to the Alhambra, the Albaicín and Sacromonte on streets that ordinary vehicles cannot manage.
• Eat late, and lightly at first. Dinner rarely starts before nine, and with free tapas arriving alongside your drinks you may not need a full meal at all.
• Allow at least two nights. One day covers the Alhambra properly; the old city, Sacromonte and a viewpoint at sunset need another.