minamax10

You guys are absolutely right. Apparently with the 22.00h visit, it means you must be at the entrance of the Palaces 5min or so before. Alhambra information answered that you should be at the Justice Gates at least 15min prior to the time on the ticket.

EYWandBTV, this is really a very helpful tip about skipping the first hall and heading straight forward. I can just picture being inside these gorgeous rooms all on your own! Neat!

kja

IMO, one of the advantages of making my night visit AFTER my day visit was knowing what I most wanted to see. Unlike EYWandBTV's experience, most of the people admitted at the same time as I was bolted straight for some of the final rooms. With my advance reading, and my advance visit, I was able to plan my route in a way that maximized my time in this magnificent place. YMMV.

unonymus_traveller

Thanks all for a lot of information.

Unfortunately I didn't manage to get daytime tickets (0830-1400) or night tickets for either 17th or 18th. So I got tickets for 1400-2000 for 17th with visit to Nasrid Palace at 1830.

Here's what I'm gonna do.
Land at Granada, bus to city, find my bnb and drop my luggage. Head straight to Alhambra, collect my tickets and enter probably by 1230-1300 (my flight lands at 0930).
See the place and reach entry to Nasrid Palace by 1815. Continue my visit after Nasrid palace.

This is the plan.
Anybody any comments or suggestions please ??

kja

With tickets for the 14:00 session, I don't know the you can get in earlier than that -- but you can at least be near the head of the line for a 14:00 admission!

If there are parts of the Alhambra other than the Nasrid Palace that you consider priorities (e.g., the Generalife), try to visit them before your admission to the Nasrid Palace. Don't assume you will have extra time afterwards, although you might.

Read what you can in advance.

Enjoy!

Alec

You can't enter other ticketed areas (Alcazaba and Generalife) until 1400 with your barcoded ticket, but you can see other unticketed areas like Charles V Palace, Arab Baths and church.

EYWandBTV

Given your limited time, the more information you have, the better. Here’s a good interactive map of the entire Alhambra. You can zoom in and see areas such as the Nasrid Palace in detail, then click on particular rooms and get a pop-up photo and description:

http://www.alhambradegranada.org/en/...activeMap.aspx

For the palace, the first main room you will enter is the Mexuar. This is the one I suggested you might want to hurry through. This room was greatly changed after the Conquest. Also, a gunpowder supply exploded in 1590 and caused a lot of damage and the room was rebuilt, so no one knows what it really looked like originally.

Some of the most jaw-droppingly beautiful spaces are:

--The Court of the Myrtles (Patio de los Arrayanes): iconic space, with the mirror-like pool reflecting the arched façade at the northern end.

--Hall of the Ambassadors: the throne room, with a dome made of thousands of pieces of painted wood, interlocked, and the walls covered with inscriptions. (Many of the rooms of the palace were covered with prayers from the Koran and poems, so a visitor to the palace would “read” the rooms as opposed to merely gawking at the complex decoration.)

--Patio of the Lions: perhaps the most famous space in the palace. The geometric carving of the arches is so rich it looks like stalactites or a melting wedding cake! Around the edge of the central fountain supported by lions is a poem praising one of the rulers, saying that his bravery tamed even the fiercest lions.

If you really get hooked by the beauty of the palace (I certainly was), you can buy a book in the Alhambra bookstore with photos and translations of all of the Koranic inscriptions and poems decorating the rooms.

memejs

Bookmarking

annhig

What we had not realised until we were there was that originally, all the arabic inscriptions were coloured, and they also used to hang carpets from the balconies to make it even more colourful.

You can't see any of the colouring at the Alhambra but if memory serves me rightly there is still some visible at the Alcazar in Seville.