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The Royal Chapel
The Capilla Real was built as the mausoleum of Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand, who drove the Moors from the city in 1492. They intended it to be the resting place of all the future monarchs of Spain, and several generations of their family were buried here, although the status of Panteón de los Reyes was later given to the monastery of El Escorial, near Madrid.
It was the last Gothic church to be built in Spain, because the medievally-minded Monarchs who ordered it disapproved of the new ideas coming from Italy, which we now call the Renaissance. The Royal Chapel is admittedly an anachronism in the flamboyant style, but how not to be enchanted by its pagoda-like spires and lacey stonework reaching into the Andalucian sky?
Nevertheless, the Royal Chapel has a Renaissance appendage - the trading hall of Granada's merchants and financiers, known as the Lonja de Mercaderes. It was built by a Genoese businessman, in the sumptuous Italian manner, adorned with wreathed columns and spreading arches.
Tourists enter the Royal Chapel through the old Lonja, but the official door is opened for religious services. This door was built as a replacement for the original entrance on the other side of the nave, when it was decided to build the new Cathedral alongside the Royal Chapel.
Just as in the churches of the Albaicin, there is a vestige of the mosque which once stood here - the well, or aljibe. This one was rebuilt by the Christians, but its very presence tells us that the oblong recess between the Lonja and the Sacristy was once the Muslims' courtyard of ablutions.
The great wrought iron screen, which separates the church's pews from the altar, was made by a master blacksmith from the city of Jaen, in northern Andalucía, el Maestro Bartolomé.
This magnificent Gothic door once connected the Chapel to the Cathedral, which was originally installed in the old mosque. When the new Cathedral was built, the old Moorish building was demolished to make way for El Sagrario, the parish church. Permanently closed, the door is scarcely noticed by the tourists who flock towards the mausoleum.
The recumbent figures of Isabel and Ferdinand were carved in Italy, many years after their deaths. Their ill-fated daughter Juana and her Flemish husband lie next to them.
Their four coffins can be viewed in the crypt below, along with the tiny one (in the far right) belonging to Prince Miguel, the Monarch's grandson - the one who, had he lived, would have prevented the Crown from falling to a foreigner.
That foreigner, Carlos Quinto, is vividly portrayed in a gilden relief near the tombs, next to his beautiful wife Isabella of Portugal. The newly wed couple spent most of the year of 1526 in Granada, bringing with them a brilliant following of philosophers, artists and poets.
The great altar piece in carved, painted wood is famous for its four panels depicting the conquest of Granada, flanking the altar in pairs. This one shows the "conversion of the moriscos", when the Moors of Granada were baptised in droves.
In the Sacristy we see a small part of Isabella's collection of Flemish paintings (most of which were robbed by Napoleon's officers and purchased by American art dealers), as well as the swords, crowns and objects which the Monarchs bore when they entered the city in 1492.
Perhaps the most priceless of these treasures is the Queen's mirror, which accompanied her on all of the Monarchs' military campaigns. We can see from its size that the pious Isabella did not let herself be tempted by the sin of vanity.
Click here to read related excerpts from the book, Granada, City of My Dreams
