Once is not enough for otherworldly Nasrid Palace

I once knew a man who was a firm believer in reincarnation, and was convinced that the passions of your current life reflected what you wanted most … but had been deprived of … in your last. I can't comment on my cosmic rebirth, but I do know there’s nothing like denial to sharpen my appetite, be it for high-fat foods or high culture.

Which is pretty much how we ended up touring the Alhambra's famous interiors twice in 36 hours.

Keen readers of this blog will remember that, last year, my long-anticipated pilgrimage to Granada's masterpiece of Moorish style was thwarted by my ignorance of its popularity. Attempting to source tickets three weeks in advance was laughable; three months is wise. I satisfied myself with some gorgeous secondary sites but the Nasrid Palace … what everyone wants to see … hovered tantalisingly beyond my reach.

The need to complete that sight-seeing mission plagued me, and no doubt drove my suggestion that our 18th annual Northwestern Girls’ Trip head for Granada. Fortunately, the other three travelers were enthusiastic, too. Thus, a year after my first attempt, I finally made my way into this fairy tale of arabesques and arches, shadow and light, water and air.

It deserves every accolade it's collected over the centuries. The building is encrusted with decorative detail. Tiles gleam. Arabic script dances. Vines and flowers twine. Plaster stalactites drip from the ceiling. Scallops edge arches. It should be a train wreck of conflicting pattern, and yet all this lavish detail comes together in such harmony that the whole building feels like a series of soothing, meditative spaces. That's surprising, given the crowds that surge through. And ironic, given the back-stabbing, internecine scheming that characterised the Nasrid rulers. But the Spanish have, thankfully, avoided greed and limited crowd numbers to a level that gives you a chance to find quiet moments and, if you pace your visit between bus tours, the occasional people-free photo. 

The palace is technically three complexes, built successively by a father, son and grandson in the 14th century. Each is anchored by an open courtyard with adjacent reception rooms, all very much built for outdoor living and filled with the sound of running water from the fountains in each courtyard. Even 500 years after their move to Spain, the Moors couldn't put aside their origins as a desert people and their extreme veneration for water.

You enter through the oldest bit, and while there are beautiful spaces here, it's no more than an amuse bouche for what's to come. The central complex spreads out from the stately Courtyard of the Myrtles, where a long, elegant reflecting pool bordered by austere clipped hedges and plain walls is a rare bit of austerity. This forms an effective counterpoint to the ornate ante-rooms through which you pass in to a throne room of epic proportions.

The Hall of the Ambassadors' 12 metre-square footprint isn't particularly large by palatial standards, but the height is extraordinary. Walls dense with complex pattern extend up through the full 23 metre height of the tower above. (Interestingly, this is not only beautiful but practical. In the blazing summers, the tower functions as a giant extractor fan, sucking hot air up through the windows placed around its top.)  The ceiling is an intricate patchwork multi-coloured wooden parquetry intended to represent the journey through Islam's seven heavens. What the average tourist is most likely to notice ... beyond its rare beauty ... is that there's a long historic precedent for all those inlaid wooden trinkets in the gift shops here.

But even the Hall of the Ambassadors fades in comparison the glory of the Courtyard of the Lions and its adjacent halls. If you've ever seen a picture of the Nasrid Palace, it was probably this: a courtyard of pristine white marble; a circle of 12 near life-sized white lions spouting water from their mouths and holding a huge bowl fountain on their backs, channels of water running away from them to the centre of each side of the courtyard, a cloister of delicate columns and arches dripping with decoration around and pavilions behind with pointed roofs to mimic desert tents. On a hot, sunny day you step from the dark, narrow, winding passageway between palaces into this, and you are almost blinded by the glare of vivid white. (Those small, zig-zagging halls separate each palace, and you'd be forgiven for thinking they're a design trick to boost your awe when you get to the "reveal" of the next grand space. In part, yes. But they're also defensive. Nasrid history rivals Game of Thrones and the Wars of the Roses for familial brutality.)

The rooms on every side of the Courtyard are exquisite, but it's the ceilings in the Halls of the Abencerrajes and the Two Sisters that will have you forgetting to breathe. These are the famous stalactite domes, densely encrusted with pinnacles that hang down into the void below. It's hard to believe they are man made; it seems more likely you've stumbled onto some planet where giant wasps or bees have expanded their architectural repertoire. They are some of the most beautiful, and completely unique, structures I've ever seen.

There's more to the Nasrid Palaces, including the baths and some lovely courtyard gardens, but once you've seen these highlights and their densely-packed decorative schemes your brain probably won't be able to cope with much more. It's one of the reasons I thought a second, nighttime visit would make sense. Such complexity demands repeated attention. What I hadn't appreciated is that the change of light creates an entirely new and different palace.

It may seem a lot to ask of your average tourist, but you simply haven't seen the Alhambra unless you've visited it both in the daylight and in dark.

This isn't just a scheme to extend opening hours. The curators have clearly thought through the experience, changing the route and carefully placing lights in places that pump up the drama and highlight particular features. Designers use the dark as well as the light, creating a mysterious journey though the blackness into puddles of illumination.

During the day, the stunning vista of river valley, old town and distant mountains draws your eye out the windows. At night all of your attention is constrained within the walls.  Illumination pulls the patterns in the walls into high relief and reveals just how much of the colour is intact. The day before, I would have told you that most of the interiors were white. How wrong I was! These walls blaze with colour. I found myself spending far more time in individual rooms at night than I had during the day, drinking in details that were now distinct and appreciating vast variety.

Once again, the most dramatic space is the Courtyard of the Lions and its side pavilions. The lions now stand in an isolated pool of light, the rest of the courtyard plunged into total darkness. Figures walking the cloisters recede to ghostly shadows. In the pavilions, walls and ceilings glow with jewel tones.

You have entered a fairy tale. It would be no surprise for Scheherazade to turn up and start spinning tales, or an old man to slide out of an alcove and offer you a strange lamp. At night, this is one of the most atmospheric and magical tourist attractions I've ever visited. Do your best to see it both ways but if you only have time for one ... embrace the darkness.

Secrets of the Alhambra: ticketing, crowds and alternative entry options

There is one vital piece of information that neither travel writers, web sites or Trip Advisor reviews seem to get across about tourism in Granada: Getting tickets to see the Nasrid palaces within the Alhambra is as challenging as snagging a table at a prized Michelin-starred restaurant.

A limited number of tickets go on sale every day exactly three months before entry. A large chunk of those are snapped up by tour companies. The rest go quickly to individuals, selling out in weeks for off-season slots and days for peak times. Pricier packaged tour options take a little longer to sell out. But if, oblivious to the scarcity of tickets, you decide about 10 days in advance to buy your tickets online to get a bit of holiday admin out of the way, you will be out of luck. Which is how I ... the architecture and history geek, the holiday advance planner who's been dreaming of seeing this paragon of Moorish architecture for decades ... ended up spending three days in Granada without getting in to its No. 1 tourist attraction.

The Alhambra is now Spain's No. 1 tourist attraction. And last year Spain jumped over the USA to become the world's second-most visited country by tourists (France is No. 1). While I'm frustrated by the general failure to communicate the scarcity of entry, I applaud the Alhambra's attempt to limit and better organise the 2.7 million people flowing through their doors every year. They're trying to prevent something I've discussed before on this blog when writing about Venice, Versailles and Mont Saint Michel: the world's great sites are becoming so over-crowded with tourists that we are destroying the experience of seeing them ... and, in some cases, the sites themselves.

The fact that the Nasrid palaces exist at all is a miracle. The interiors represent the height of Islamic architecture, complete with Koranic verses flowing through the ornate geometric and foliate wall panels. Legend has it that it was all so beautiful that even when the Spanish establishment was stooping to mass deportation and genocide to get Muslims out of their country, they couldn't bear to destroy their craftsmanship. By the time Washington Irving wrote his classic Tales from the Alhambra in the 19th century, however, the buildings were all but abandoned after sustaining bad damage in the Napoleonic wars, mouldering into ruin in a disorganised, increasingly impoverished country. Irving's writing, arguably, started their restoration and climb towards tourist super-stardom.

These days they're a must see for anyone beguiled by pattern, architecture, courtyard gardens and stunning views. (The complex tops a promontory at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, with dramatic vistas spreading out in every direction.) Increasing Asian and Oriental tourist numbers are adding to the crowds. But I think there are some other factors at work here. So much of the Islamic world is now considered unsafe for travel that this is one of the few easily accessible spots to revel in the glories of the architecture of its Golden Age. And the Spanish ... perhaps in penance for the Inquisition and all those centuries of being one of the most xenophobic countries on the planet ... are now playing up the wonders of Moorish Spain as a useful ideal for our own days. A time when Muslims, Christians and Jews lived and worked side-by-side, freely practicing their religions while also engaging in remarkable scientific discovery and thoughtful philosophy. This is the cultural zeitgeist that both Granada and Cordoba are promoting hard in their tourism. It's a comforting message in our increasingly polarised world. Even if it does ignore a great deal of political dirty dealing, internecine warfare and intolerance on both sides, even in the glory days. The Nasrids might have lived in exquisite splendour; their track record as rulers isn't so beautiful.

Turns out that you can still get a hearty taste of this splendour without getting into the Nasrid masterpieces. The Alhambra rambles over 26 acres on two hilltops linked by a bridge. Far more than a royal palace, it was a walled city-within-a-city embracing all the critical functions of government: administrative offices, military housing, reception rooms, bath houses, markets, craft workshops and housing for everyone who worked there from high to low. It's so big that the Generalife on the second hilltop was actually a garden palace where the kings of Granada could retreat to escape from their official, more centrally-located residences on the other hilltop.

Enter the Alhambra through the Gate of Justice and you can wander around through the site and look at all the buildings from the outside for free. You'll get stunning views and can see some of the better gardens from a distance. The ruins of the old city now feature a monastery and a couple of hotels. Lunch of traditional Spanish classics in the pretty, vine-covered courtyard of the Hotel America could make for a pleasant day out up here without doing any additional sightseeing.

For a bargain €7 you can buy a ticket that gets you in to all the buildings and gardens besides the three main Nasrid Palaces: notably the Generalife, the Alcazar, the Partal gardens and the palace of Charles V. Discovering this on your own, however, is unlikely. Google searches, Trip Advisor discussion groups and the Alhambra's own web site were no help; it took the city's tourism office to point me in the right direction. (The ticket booking page for this option is within the Alhambra's main web site, but not obvious to find.)

The Generalife is, at least judging from pictures of the Nasrid Palace interiors, a representative slice of both the architecture and the gardens you'd find in the main attraction. The gardens leading up to, and within the courtyard of, the residential villa overflow with colour in late April. Wisteria, iris, snapdragons, salvia, poppies and more are laid out to imitate the colour patterns of oriental rugs. At the end of a long courtyard with a water channel down the centre, flowers on each side and an arched arcade to the left giving dramatic views over the valley below, stands a pavilion covered with stone so intricately carved it's almost writhing. Indeed, it is partially alive as small songbirds live in and on the screen, piping a merry tune as you explore. The hall, niches, windows and ceiling beyond offer so much decorative detail to study it would take you a lifetime to properly see it all.

The Alcazar, at the other end of the Albambra complex, is the oldest part and was the military bit. What it lacks in decorative detail it makes up for in views from its towers.

In between, the Partal Gardens are similar to the Generalife (more gardens with water features terminating in a screen of ornamental architecture with views over the valley below), though the gardens here at this time of year are less impressive; mostly box-hedged parterres filled with plants that will be at their height later in the summer. At the bottom of this garden is the oratorio, a small chapel built into the outer walls with a jaw-dropping interior (below).

The Nasrid Palace tours end in this garden, while above it looms the much later palace of Charles V.Sitting on the streets of Madrid, Florence or Vienna it would be a gem: all Late Rennaisance bulk, elegance and classicism, the exterior cube made interesting by a massive, round internal courtyard with a double colonnade. Here, the Western style feels a clumsy, oversized interloper against the Islamic flights of fancy. Inside, there's an art collection upstairs and a museum of Nasrid finds below. Even without entry to the Nasrid Palaces, however, we had run out of the energy needed to explore these.

The decorative density of both the architecture and the gardens is so overwhelming up here that it burns your brain energy quickly. We just couldn't take in any more and appreciate it properly. I can't imagine that many of those who manage to get the Nasrid Palace tickets have both the time and the concentration to fully appreciate the rest of the site. Based on what I know now, I would book one of the organised evening tours to the palace and book the ticket for the Generalife et al as a second, daytime visit. If you're not that serious about the architecture, the sample you get in the €7 ticket may be enough for you.

From a visitor experience point of view, the Alhambra's ticketing strategy does seem to be working. Though the main Generalife garden and the courtyard outside the Nasrid Palaces were packed, we only waited in a few queues and the crowds were never so big as to destroy the experience. In most cases, stepping aside and waiting a few minutes would give me a clear, people-free shot of most things I wanted to photograph. This may be the future of all Tier 1 tourist sites. Thoughtful planning and advance booking will become essential. It will be helpful, of course, if attraction web sites make that clear.