The Alhambra: The Nasrid Palaces, the Alcazaba and the Generalife

The Alhambra is the palace-city on its hill above Granada, built for the Nasrid emirs and their court and later lived in by the Kings of Castile; the decoration of the Nasrid Palaces is one of the high points of Andalusi art. It became Spain's first UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984, together with the Generalife, the Nasrid kings' country villa and gardens just above it, and in 2016 it had over 2.6 million visitors, second in Spain only to the Sagrada Família. When Granada surrendered in 1492, the Catholic Monarchs' men raised the cross and their banner on the Tower of Comares, and in the 1520s Charles V began a Renaissance palace inside the walls. On the Alcazaba, the Torre de la Vela, built between 1238 and 1279, had a bell rung at dawn to tell the farmers of the Vega when to water.