Three days in Granada: the last Moorish city in Spain, and its conquerors are buried in it

The river gorge and the sunset viewpoint on arrival, a whole day inside the Alhambra, and the tombs of the Catholic Monarchs on the last morning.

Copy this itinerary
Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Granada
Places
9 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Granada was the last Muslim city in Spain. The Nasrid emirs held it for two and a half centuries after the rest of al-Andalus had fallen, and on 2 January 1492 the keys went to Ferdinand and Isabella, who liked the place enough to be buried in it. The palace the emirs left behind is the reason nearly everybody comes.

The Alhambra is not one building but a walled town on a ridge: a fortress at the western end, the royal palaces in the middle, a Renaissance block dropped in by Charles V, and a summer estate of water gardens on the hill behind. It takes most of a day and it does not reward hurrying.

Facing it across a river gorge is the Albaicín, the old Moorish quarter, which is a hill of white houses, cobbled lanes too narrow for a car and walled gardens you can only see over. Two nights is enough for both, plus the cathedral quarter down in the flat part of town, and the mountains behind everything are the Sierra Nevada with snow on them until June.

Highlights

  • The Court of the Lions and the honeycombed ceilings of the Nasrid palaces, on a booked half hour slot
  • The water gardens of the Generalife, built as somewhere to escape from the palace below
  • The Alhambra lit up from the San Nicolás viewpoint, with the Sierra Nevada behind it
  • Free tapas with every drink, which in Granada is the rule rather than a promotion

Where to stay

Granada, two nights

One base for all three days. The cathedral quarter, the Albaicín and the Alhambra sit within a kilometre of one another, separated by gradient rather than distance.

Granada is 700 metres up with a three thousand metre mountain range behind it, so the evenings are cool even in July and the winter is genuinely cold. Whatever the month, take a layer for the sunset viewpoint.

Day by day

Day 1 in Granada

The Darro, the Arab baths and sunset over the Alhambra

The first afternoon belongs to the other hill. Start where the Darro comes out from under the city at the foot of the Albaicín and follow it east along the Carrera del Darro, a cobbled lane hemmed in by the river on one side and old houses on the other, with the Alhambra walls standing directly above.

At the end of it the lane opens into a square looking straight up at the fortress, which is where to have a drink before the climb. Then it is uphill through the lanes to the viewpoint on the western shoulder of the Albaicín, which is where the whole city goes at sunset.

  1. 16:30

    Hamman El Bañuelo

    Other

    An 11th century Arab bath house, brick vaults with star-shaped holes punched in them to let the steam out and the light in, and one of the best preserved in Spain. It survived because somebody built a house on top of it. Ten minutes and almost nothing to get in.

  2. 17:15

    Paseo de los Tristes

    Landmark

    Where the riverside lane ends, under the Alhambra's north wall and the bridge up to the Generalife. The name means the promenade of the sad, from the funerals that once passed through. Now it is terraces and a busker or two, and it is the best place in Granada to sit and look up.

  3. 19:30

    San Nicolas Viewpoint

    Other

    Twenty minutes uphill through the Albaicín lanes, a small terrace in front of a church with the Alhambra full on across the gorge and the Sierra Nevada rising behind it. Crowded, and worth it anyway. Come an hour before sunset for a spot on the wall, and stay for the floodlights coming on.

  4. 21:30

    Tapas on the way down

    Eat

    Work back down the hill and stop wherever a bar has people standing outside it. Two or three drinks with what comes attached is the local dinner, and it is better in the plain places than the pretty ones.

With more time: The little square at the top of the Albaicín, away from the viewpoint, is where the quarter's own residents shop and drink and there is a market on Saturday mornings. Further round the hill, Sacromonte is the old cave quarter, still lived in, with a museum explaining how and a few caves putting on flamenco at night.

Day 2 in Granada

A whole day in the Alhambra

Give it the day. The complex is 700 metres long, holds a fortress, two palaces and a summer estate, and people who allow three hours spend two of them walking and one of them regretting it.

The fixed point is the entry slot for the Nasrid palaces, which is the time printed on the ticket and is not flexible by so much as ten minutes. Build the day around it: the Renaissance palace and the fortress ramparts before, the water gardens on the far hill after, and lunch somewhere in between rather than in the middle of a slot.

Take water and a hat in summer. There is shade in the gardens and very little on the ramparts, and the site is a good deal bigger on foot than it looks on the map.

  1. 09:15

    Palace of Charles V

    Historic

    Charles V's answer to the palace he had just inherited: a square Renaissance block with a perfectly circular colonnaded courtyard cut out of the middle of it, begun in 1527 and left without a roof for four hundred years. Cold, imperial and completely out of place, which is the point of it. Free to walk into, and it holds the site's two museums.

  2. 11:00

    Palacios Nazaries

    Historic

    The reason for the trip: three linked palaces built for the Nasrid court in the 14th century, in plaster, tile and cedar rather than stone. The Court of the Myrtles with its long still pool, the Hall of the Ambassadors under a domed ceiling of eight thousand pieces of wood, and the Court of the Lions with its twelve stone lions and its ring of impossibly thin columns. Your ticket admits you at one printed time and no other.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch inside the walls

    Eat

    There is a café near the Charles V palace and a hotel restaurant in the old convent above it, and both are better than a trip down the hill and back up again. Otherwise bring something and eat it in the woods.

  4. 15:00

    Generalife

    Historic

    The emirs' summer estate on the hill behind, ten minutes from the palaces on foot and a different kind of pleasure: terraces of clipped hedge, a long courtyard with water arcing across it from both sides, and views back over the whole complex. Go last, when the coach parties have gone and the light is low.

With more time: The Alcazaba at the western end is the oldest part of the site and its watchtower gives you the best view over Granada from anywhere inside the walls. On the way back down, the walled gardens of the Carmen de los Mártires sit just outside the complex, cost nothing, and are usually empty.

Day 3 in Granada

The Royal Chapel, the cathedral and the old silk market

The last morning is the Christian city, which was built directly on top of the Muslim one and mostly within three streets of itself. The chapel came first, put up by the monarchs who took the city so that they could be buried where they had won.

The cathedral next door is a different proposition: enormous, white and bright inside, and startling if you have come straight from the Alhambra. Both are ten minutes from where you are staying and neither needs booking.

  1. 09:45

    Royal Chapel

    Religious

    Built between 1505 and 1517 to hold Ferdinand and Isabella, whose marble effigies lie beside their daughter Juana and her husband Philip. The lead coffins in the crypt underneath are plainer than anything above them, and the sacristy holds Isabella's own collection of Flemish paintings along with the crown and the sword.

  2. 11:00

    Cathedral of Granada

    Religious

    Begun in 1523 on the site of the main mosque and finished, in stages and in a different style from the one it started in, two centuries later. The second largest cathedral in Spain, and unusually white inside: enormous round piers, a domed sanctuary and clear glass high up, so it is full of light rather than gloom.

  3. 12:15

    Corral del Carbón

    Culture

    Two minutes south, and the oldest building in the lower town: a 14th century caravanserai where merchants stabled animals downstairs and slept upstairs, with a horseshoe arch onto the street and a bare brick courtyard behind it. Free, takes ten minutes, and almost nobody goes in.

  4. 13:00

    Last coffee on Bib-Rambla

    Eat

    The square west of the cathedral has terraces, a flower market and the tower in view. It is fifteen minutes on foot from here to the station and about the same to the bus terminal.

With more time: The lanes immediately south of the cathedral are what is left of the Moorish silk market, rebuilt after a fire in the 1840s and now full of souvenir stalls, but worth walking through. With a later train, the Carthusian monastery twenty minutes north has a baroque sacristy that has to be seen to be believed.

Before you go

Where to stay

The flat part of town around the cathedral and Plaza de Bib-Rambla is the practical choice: everything on the last day is on the doorstep, the climb to the Alhambra takes twenty minutes, and you can wheel a suitcase to the door.

The Albaicín is beautiful and it is a hill. Lanes are stepped, taxis stop at the bottom, and delivery vans genuinely cannot get up some of them. Worth it for a couple of nights if you are travelling light and want to be somewhere extraordinary rather than somewhere convenient.

Realejo, the old Jewish quarter on the slope below the Alhambra, is the compromise: quiet, a few minutes from the centre, and full of the bars where the free tapas are best.

Getting in and around

The high speed train from Madrid takes a little over three hours. From Seville it is around two and a half by train or three by bus, and from Málaga about an hour and a half. The station is a fifteen minute walk northwest of the cathedral, and the small airport out to the west has only a handful of domestic flights, so most people arrive overland.

In town, walk. The old centre is small and flat; everything above it is not, and the small red C31 and C32 minibuses exist precisely for that. They grind up into the Albaicín and along to the Alhambra all day for the price of a normal ticket, and they are the only vehicles that fit.

Do not drive into the old town. Much of it is camera-enforced, the lanes were laid out for mules, and the hotels that say they have parking mean a garage several streets away.

The walk up to the Alhambra from the centre is through a wooded gorge, the Cuesta de Gomérez, and takes about twenty-five minutes uphill. It is pleasant in April and punishing in August; the minibus costs less than a coffee.

Booking the Alhambra, which is the whole trip

Buy tickets the moment you know your dates. Daily numbers are capped, the Nasrid palaces admit visitors in half hour slots, and in spring, summer and autumn the site sells out weeks and sometimes months ahead. This is the single planning decision that decides whether the trip works.

The name on the ticket is checked against photo ID at the gate, and they are strict about it. Buy in the name of the person who will be standing there, and carry the passport or card you booked with.

The time on your ticket is the entry time for the Nasrid palaces specifically, not for the site. Miss it and you do not get in, even with a valid ticket. Everything else, the fortress, Charles V's palace, the gardens, can be done before or after in any order.

If it has sold out, the night visit to the palaces is sold separately and is often still available, and it is a genuinely different experience: fewer people, lit courtyards, no view of the mountains. There are also free-entry areas of the complex, and a general garden ticket that covers the Generalife without the palaces.

Eating, and the tapas rule

Granada is the city in Spain where a drink still comes with food attached. Order a beer or a wine and a plate arrives with it, unasked and included, and it gets better with each round rather than worse. Three drinks in the right bars is dinner, and it will cost less than a main course anywhere else in Andalusia.

That means choosing bars rather than restaurants. The streets of Realejo, around Calle Navas, and the ones off the lower Albaicín are where locals do it. Sitting on a terrace on a famous square usually cancels the whole arrangement.

The Moroccan tea houses on the lane climbing from Plaza Nueva into the Albaicín are aimed at visitors and are still a good place to sit. For something local, look for habas con jamón, broad beans with ham, and remojón, an orange and salt cod salad that sounds wrong and is not.

Granada is a city about a view. From the Albaicín you look at the Alhambra, from the Alhambra you look at the Albaicín, and behind both of them the Sierra Nevada holds its snow into early summer. Wherever you end up standing, turn around.

If you have an extra day, go up rather than on. The mountain road climbs to over two thousand metres in under an hour, and the villages of the Alpujarras on the southern slopes are a different Andalusia entirely.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Is three days enough for Granada?
Yes. The Alhambra takes one full day, the Albaicín takes an afternoon and an evening, and the cathedral quarter takes a morning. A fourth day would buy you Sacromonte properly, a hammam, or a day up in the Sierra Nevada.
How far in advance should I book Alhambra tickets?
As soon as you have dates. Two to three months for spring, summer and Easter, several weeks otherwise. The daily total is capped and the Nasrid palace slots go first. If the day you want is gone, look at the night visit, which is sold as a separate ticket.
What happens if I miss my Nasrid palace time slot?
You do not get in to the palaces, and there is no second chance later in the day. The rest of the site stays open to you. Be at the palace entrance ten minutes early, and remember that the walk from the main gate to that door takes a good fifteen minutes.
Are tapas really free?
In Granada, yes, and it is a genuine local custom rather than a tourist offer. A drink comes with a plate, and the plates usually improve as you order more. It works best in ordinary neighbourhood bars; terraces on the main squares often charge for food like everywhere else.
When is the best time to go?
April, May, September and October. July and August are very hot in the day, though the altitude cools the nights. Winter is cold and clear, the Alhambra is at its emptiest, and there is skiing forty-five minutes away with the city still in view from the slopes.
Can I do Granada as a day trip from Seville or Málaga?
You can, and it is a poor trade: the Alhambra alone fills a day, and you would see none of the Albaicín and none of the evening, which is when the city is at its best. Two nights is the minimum that makes the journey worth making.