City walk · La Antequeruela, Granada · Spain
Washington Irving
1783–1859 · a real person
A courteous, moonstruck American traveller of 1829 — wry, a little credulous, hopelessly in love with a ruin
Read what Washington Irving says
My name is Washington Irving, and in the spring of 1829 I talked my way into lodgings inside this half-abandoned palace. An old woman here told me of a parchment: directions, seven fragments long, to the legacy a Moorish householder buried when his people left Granada. I copied them into a notebook, and the notebook is long gone — but the fragments were never on paper. They were fastened to the hill itself: in Latin on a fountain, in Roman numerals on a soldier's plaque, in the count of the lions. Walk with me and read them back to me, one by one, and we shall know which tower keeps the Moor's legacy.
La Antequeruela · 7 stops · 1.5 km
about 12 min walking, 28 min listening at the stops — going inside is extra · Tap a stop on the map for a preview.
40 min · 1.5 km · 7 stops · medium
You’re walking this one before anyone at Walk & Tell has. If something looks wrong, tap Report at any stop — we’ll fix it for everyone after you.
The walk
In 1829 an American writer moved into the half-ruined Alhambra and filled notebooks with tales of buried Moorish gold. This walk follows seven fragments of one of those tales across the hill — fountain, plaques, Renaissance courtyard, Nasrid palaces — reading dates, inscriptions and lions to rebuild a set of directions. It stays inside the walled precinct, so every clue is something you can stand in front of and read or count. What you find at the end is not gold, but it is the reason the Alhambra still stands.
Start here
Plaza de la Explanada, Realejo Alto
Stand at the Pilar de Carlos V, the big carved stone fountain against the wall just below the Puerta de la Justicia, at the main entrance ramp into the Alhambra precinct.
Directions