The Albaicin

El Albaicín is the old Moorish quarter of the city. It's located on a hill facing the Alhambra and there are dramatic views of this area from the Alhamra's famous rose gardens. The Zirid Monarchs first established their court in the Albaicin in the 11th century although little remains from this era today, apart from some crumbling remains of the wall (including the section which used to encircle the Albaicín and the gates of El Arco de las Pesas, Monaita and Elvira).

Lower Granada is staunchly and impressively Catholic, with the immense and ornate Cathedral and ten´s of other smaller parish churches anchoring the barrios.

But as you take a left off Calle del Darro into the Albaicin, you are Somewhere Else, Fes maybe or Meknes or some backstreet of Marrakesh. Here are small smokey teterias, tea shops, darkly lit with groups of loungers sharing a common hookah. Calles and smaller streets, callejons, wander off uphill, passing large villas called carmens for their expressive interior gardens. Shops line the small streets looking as if laundry was hung out to dry but these are the cloths and clothes for sale; also for sale, piled haphazardly, are hammered tea sets, inlaid decorative wooden boxes, fantastically decorated shoes with dangerously pointy toes, jelabbahs more common to North Africa than Spain.

The cobblestoned way is slippery, dangerous, you feel as though with a turn of the ankle and a small stumble you would catapault right off the hill down into the Darro River. The Albaicin is a bit threatening and mysterious, as all things that we don´t understand are mysterious. Maps can´t help you in the Albaicin, you have to blunder out as you bumbled in . . .