Castles · Tour

Alhambra Guided to the Kilns Where the Decoration Was Made

Most Alhambra tours end at the finished surfaces. This one goes to the workshops. The route runs the full site with an official guide, and it includes the part of the Medina where the ruins of the kilns and workshops still stand: the place where the plaster was cast and the tiles fired for the rooms you have just walked through. Seeing the ovens changes the palaces. The decoration stops being a miracle and becomes a manufacturing operation, run at scale, on site, by people who lived a hundred metres from the sultan. The same instinct runs through the rest of the visit. In the Comares Palace the guide explains how the stucco was actually made and how the original woodwork of the ceiling was cut. In the Alcazaba, how the defences worked and what happened to them after the Christian conquest. On the dry ground beyond, the ruins of the palace of the Abencerrajes, the family whose name the legends attached to a fountain. Start times can be chosen at booking, and in exceptional cases may be changed. The booking is monitored from purchase to the day of the visit, and the group is received at the operator's own meeting point a few metres from the ticket office.