Granada: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
On the second of January 1492 Boabdil handed the keys of Granada to Ferdinand and Isabella and rode out, ending seven hundred and eighty years of Muslim rule in Iberia. In the same year the monarchs expelled the Jews and gave Columbus his commission, both at Santa Fe a few kilometres from here — so three things that shaped the next five centuries were settled within sight of this hill in twelve months. Three hours, and the Alhambra needs a ticket booked weeks ahead.
A short history of Granada
The Iberians and the Romans had already settled on the hills of Granada, and under Muslim rule the Arabs called it 'Granada of the Jews' because of the large community that lived there. In the 11th century Samuel ha-Nagid, a poet and military commander, served here as vizier to the Zirid kings. In 1238 the Nasrid kingdom was established here; the Nasrids built the Alhambra, and it was the last Muslim kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula. On 2 January 1492 the city surrendered to the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, and in March of that year the decree expelling the Jews from Spain was signed here. In 1984 the Alhambra was declared a World Heritage Site.
The ten best sights in Granada
1Alhambra19 euros, book weeks ahead, and the Nasrid slot is a fixed half hour
2Nasrid PalacesIn the Alhambra ticket, and if you miss your slot you do not get in
3GeneralifeIn the ticket, the sultans’ summer garden, and the water is the design
4Palace of Charles VFree, a circle inside a square, and it had no roof for four hundred years
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5Puerta de la Justicia
Free, the old main gate, and the hand and key carved on it are the puzzle
6Granada Cathedral6 euros, built on the great mosque, and it took 181 years
7Royal Chapel6 euros, and Ferdinand and Isabella are in lead coffins in the crypt
8Madraza2 euros, the Nasrid university of 1349, and one room survives
9Corral del CarbónFree, a 14th-century merchants’ inn, and the only one left in Spain
10El Bañuelo5 euros, an eleventh-century bath house, and star-shaped holes in the vault
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Granada →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Granada:
Free walking tours in Granada
The last kingdom
On the second of January 1492 Boabdil handed the keys of Granada to Ferdinand and Isabella and rode out, ending seven hundred and eighty years of Muslim rule in Iberia. In the same year the monarchs expelled the Jews and gave Columbus his commission, both at Santa Fe a few kilometres from here — so three things that shaped the next five centuries were settled within sight of this hill in twelve months. Three hours, and the Alhambra needs a ticket booked weeks ahead.
- Puerta de la Justicia · The old main gate, built in 1348, and carved above the outer arch is an open hand while above the inner one is a key. The usual reading is that the hand is the five pillars of Islam and the key is the opening of paradise — but a Granadan legend says the city will fall only when the hand reaches down and takes the key, and in 1492 nobody had to.
- Nasrid Palaces · The walls are covered in Arabic writing — poetry, Koranic verse and one phrase repeated thousands of times across the whole complex: wa lā ghāliba illā Allāh, there is no victor but God. It was the Nasrid motto, adopted after their first sultan had to accept Castilian overlordship to survive, which makes it a statement about losing.
- Palace of Charles V · The emperor began it in 1527 and had it set down inside the Alhambra, a perfect Renaissance square with a perfect circle cut out of the middle — the only building of its kind in Spain. It ran out of money, the roof was never put on, and it stood open to the sky for four hundred years until the 1960s.
- Generalife · The sultans’ summer garden, and everything in it is organised around moving water — the channel down the middle of the staircase runs in the handrails, so you walk up a stair with water running beside both hands. All of it is gravity-fed from a canal eight kilometres up the hill, dug in the thirteenth century and still working.
- Royal Chapel · Ferdinand and Isabella chose to be buried in Granada rather than in Castile, as a statement about what their reign had been for. Above them is a marble monument with their effigies side by side — and the sculptor pressed Isabella’s head deeper into the stone pillow than Ferdinand’s, which was understood as a comment on which of them had the heavier mind.
- Granada Cathedral · Begun in 1523 on the site of the great mosque and not finished until 1704 — a hundred and eighty-one years, which is why it starts Gothic at the foundations and ends baroque at the front. The two towers in the design were never built: the ground turned out to be too soft to carry them.
The quarter that stayed
The Albaicín is the Moorish town, and it is still laid out the way it was before 1492 — lanes that are the width of a loaded mule, blank walls with a door in them, and behind the door a garden. That house type is called a carmen and the whole quarter is built of them, which is why you can walk for an hour and see almost nothing from the street. It faces the Alhambra across a ravine, and the view back is the reason everybody climbs it. Two and a half hours, and all of it is uphill or down.
- Carrera del Darro · The street runs along the river Darro under the Alhambra wall, and two of the bridges on it are Moorish. The river itself continues under the city — it was covered over in the nineteenth century from Plaza Nueva onward, and the whole centre of Granada is built on a roof above running water.
- El Bañuelo · An eleventh-century bath house, one of the oldest surviving in Spain, and it survived because after the conquest it was turned into a private house and a laundry rather than destroyed. The star-shaped holes in the brick vault let the steam out, and the columns holding it up were taken from Roman and Visigothic buildings.
- Dar al-Horra · The palace of Aixa, mother of Boabdil, the last sultan — the name means house of the honest lady. She is the one who, by the story, told him as he wept at the pass outside the city: weep like a woman for the kingdom you could not defend like a man. The building is almost intact and almost nobody visits it.
- Mirador San Nicolás · The view from this terrace — the whole Alhambra on its ridge with the Sierra Nevada white behind it — is the one on every poster of Spain. Bill Clinton came here in 1997 and called it the most beautiful sunset in the world, which the city has quoted ever since and which is why it is now full by seven.
- Mirador San Cristóbal · Higher up the hill than San Nicolás, outside the old wall, and almost empty at the same hour — the Alhambra is smaller from here but you get the whole city in the frame as well, and a surviving stretch of the eleventh-century Zirid wall runs along beside it.
- Paseo de los Tristes · The name means the walk of the sad ones: funeral processions went along here on the way to the cemetery higher up the valley, and the street kept the nickname. It is now the place with the terraces, the Alhambra lit directly above it, and the guitarists — which is a very Granadan reversal.
Caves, tapas and the snow
Granada does three things no other Spanish city does. It still gives you a free plate of food with every drink, properly, not as a token. It has a quarter of inhabited caves on a hillside where a particular kind of flamenco was invented and is still performed in the rooms it was invented in. And it has a ski resort forty-five minutes above it and a beach an hour below, so you can do both in a day. Three hours for the walk, and the mountain is a separate day.
- Calle Navas · Granada is one of the last cities in Spain where a tapa comes free with every drink, and the rule is real: you order a beer and a plate arrives, and the plate gets better with each round because the bar assumes you are staying. Four drinks is dinner. This street is where everyone tests it.
- Realejo · The Jewish quarter until 1492 — the name comes from Garnata al-Yahud, Granada of the Jews, which is one proposed origin of the city’s name itself. Nothing of the synagogues survives. What covers the walls now is the work of a street artist called El Niño de las Pinturas, who has been painting here since the 1990s.
- Sacromonte · Roma families dug into this hillside from the sixteenth century, after the expulsions pushed them outside the walls, and about a thousand people still live in caves here. The zambra, the flamenco form that developed in those caves, is danced without the usual bata de cola and comes out of a Moorish wedding ceremony.
- Sacromonte Caves Museum · Ten cave dwellings furnished as they were lived in — the kitchen, the weaver’s cave, the blacksmith’s, the stable. The caves hold a steady temperature of about eighteen degrees all year, which in a city that reaches forty in August is not poverty but engineering.
- Sacromonte Abbey · In 1595 lead tablets in Arabic and Latin were dug up on this hill, apparently proving that Arabic-speaking Christians had been in Granada since the first century — which would have made the Morisco population indigenous Christians rather than converts. Rome declared them forgeries in 1682. The abbey was built on them anyway.
- Carmen de los Mártires · A nineteenth-century garden on the Alhambra hill, laid out in four different styles at once — French, English, Spanish and a Nasrid imitation — with peacocks walking in it and almost no visitors, because it is three minutes from the Alhambra ticket queue and nobody looks sideways.
Getting to Granada and getting around
- Federico García Lorca Airport · 17 kilometres west, the bus is 3 euros, and it meets every flight
- Railway Station · The fast train to Madrid is 3h15, and to Seville about 2h30
- Bus Station · Buses to the Alpujarras and the coast, and 3 kilometres from the centre
- Plaza Nueva · The small red buses to the Alhambra and the Albaicín leave from here
Cheap eats in Granada
Eight counters where Granada eats standing, and the rule here is different from the rest of Spain: the tapa is free. You order a drink, a plate comes with it, you did not choose it and you do not pay for it — and the plate improves with each round, because the bar assumes you are staying. Four drinks is dinner and costs about twelve euros. Ordering food on your first drink marks you out immediately.
- Bodegas Castañeda · A drink with tapa is about 3 euros, and standing is the point
- Los Diamantes · About 3 euros a round, cash, and four branches now
- Mercado San Agustín · The food market behind the cathedral, open till two, and no tourists
- Taberna La Tana · A wine bar the size of a corridor, and they choose for you
- Bar Ávila · Where the locals go, outside the centre, and the tapas are the biggest
- Chikito · About 20 euros a main, and the bar side is cheaper
- Los Italianos · An ice cream shop since 1936, open March to October only
- Calle Elvira teterías · Moroccan tea with pastries, low tables, and open till two
Museums in Granada
- Alhambra · 19 euros, book six to eight weeks ahead, and bring the passport you booked with
- Royal Chapel · 6 euros, and the lead coffins below are plainer than the marble above
- Granada Cathedral · 6 euros, 181 years to build, and the two towers were never added
- Fine Arts Museum · 1.5 euros, inside the Charles V palace, and free for EU passports
- Archaeological Museum · 1.5 euros, in a palace on the Darro, and an hour is enough
- Huerta de San Vicente · 3 euros, guided only, and free on Wednesdays
- Sacromonte Caves Museum · 5 euros, ten furnished caves, and the walk up is twenty minutes
- Parque de las Ciencias · 7 euros, a planetarium and a butterfly house, and half a day
Nature and day trips near Granada
Granada sits at seven hundred metres with a three-thousand-metre range behind it and the sea an hour in front, which is a geography no other European city has — you can ski in the morning and swim in the afternoon, and people do it as a stunt in March. The water that makes the Alhambra work comes off that snow.
- Pradollano · A lift pass is about 50 euros, and the bus takes 45 minutes
- Veleta · Free, and the last stretch is a two-hour walk
- Pampaneira · An hour south, and the three villages are a two-hour walk apart
- Capileira · The highest of the three at 1,436 metres, and the trails start there
- Carmen de los Mártires · Free, four garden styles at once, peacocks, and empty
- García Lorca Park · Free, round the poet’s house, and this is where the city runs
- Salobreña · An hour south, a white village on a rock, and the beach below
- Guadix · An hour east, and the cave quarter is free to walk
Things to do in Granada with kids
- Parque de las Ciencias · 7 euros, a planetarium, a butterfly house and a birds of prey show
- Alhambra · Free under twelve, and the gardens take the running energy
- Generalife · In the ticket, water running down the stair handrails, and shade
- Sacromonte Caves Museum · 5 euros, ten caves to walk into, and donkeys outside
- Pradollano · Snow from December to May, a beginners’ area, and sledges for hire
- Salobreña · An hour south, dark sand and shallow water, and a castle above
- García Lorca Park · Free, playgrounds and big trees, and a ten-minute walk from the centre
- Los Italianos · Ice cream since 1936, and the queue is the entertainment
Holy places in Granada
Three religions ran this city in sequence and each one built on what the last had left. The cathedral stands on the great mosque, the Royal Chapel next to it holds the monarchs who ended Muslim rule, and the Albaicín above is still laid out the way the Moors left it. Almost everything here costs five or six euros.
- Granada Cathedral · 6 euros, and a joint ticket with the chapel is 10
- Royal Chapel · 6 euros, and the crown and sceptre in the sacristy are theirs
- San Juan de Dios Basilica · 5 euros, and the gilding is genuinely overwhelming
- San Jerónimo Monastery · 5 euros, and the Great Captain who took Naples is buried in it
- La Cartuja · 5 euros, and the sacristy is the most extreme baroque in Spain
- Sacromonte Abbey · 5 euros, catacombs under it, and the forged lead books are the story
- Madraza · 2 euros, one room, and ten minutes
- El Bañuelo · 5 euros, an 11th-century bath, and the columns are Roman spolia
Nightlife in Granada
Granada has sixty thousand students in a city of two hundred and thirty thousand, and the free tapa means a night out costs almost nothing — which is why the streets are full on a Tuesday. The flamenco here is a particular form called zambra, performed in the Sacromonte caves it came out of, and the tourist versions and the real ones are both on the same road.
- Calle Navas · The tapas street, a drink with a plate is 3 euros, and it starts at eight
- Campo del Príncipe · A square of terraces in the Realejo, and the locals outnumber everyone
- Peña La Platería · From 15 euros on public nights, and check the night first
- Jardines de Zoraya · Flamenco twice a night in a carmen garden, and from 25 euros
- Sacromonte · The zambra caves, and the walk back down is twenty minutes
- Bodegas Castañeda · Standing room only, barrels on the wall, and open till one
- La Botillería · A wine list that is taken seriously, and it is next to La Tana
- Paseo de los Tristes · The terraces under the lit Alhambra, and guitarists most nights
Frequently asked questions about Granada
What is there to see in Granada?
The top sights in Granada are Alhambra, Nasrid Palaces and Generalife. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Granada?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Granada without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Granada?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Granada, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The last kingdom.
How do you get to Granada and get around?
The main ways are Federico García Lorca Airport, Railway Station and Bus Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Granada, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Granada that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Granada for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.