Explore Granada

The Royal Chapel of Granada is the burial place of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella I and Ferdinand II, built in the Isabelline Gothic style between 1505 and 1517 beside Granada Cathedral. Behind a wrought-iron screen stand their marble tombs, with a crypt below; the sacristy museum holds Isabella's crown and sceptre, Flemish panel paintings from her collection and her missal.

Granada Cathedral, seat of the Archdiocese of Granada, was begun in 1518 by Enrique Egas on the site of the city's main mosque and continued from 1529 by Diego de Siloé, who gave it five naves and a circular main chapel in Renaissance style. Alonso Cano redesigned the main façade in 1667. Inside are two 18th-century organs and 16th-century stained glass.

The Corral del Carbón is a 14th-century Nasrid funduq, a grain exchange and merchants' inn, near Granada Cathedral and the only one of its period preserved in Spain. A brick gateway with a horseshoe arch and muqarnas vault leads to a square courtyard with a stone basin, ringed by three floors of galleries. Its name comes from the coal stored there in the 17th century.

The Madrasa of Granada was founded in 1349 by the Nasrid sultan Yusuf I as the city's Islamic college, beside the main mosque on today's Calle Oficios. Its prayer hall with carved stucco survives inside a baroque palace built in 1722–1729 as Granada's city hall. The University of Granada now uses the building as a cultural centre with exhibitions.

The Royal Monastery of San Jerónimo is a Hieronymite monastery in central Granada, founded by the Catholic Monarchs and built from 1504, largely to designs by Diego de Siloé. Its Renaissance church holds the tomb of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, the 'Great Captain', before a carved main altarpiece, and the visit includes two cloisters built around gardens.

The Alhambra is a palace and fortress complex on the Sabika hill above Granada, built mainly by the Nasrid sultans in the 13th and 14th centuries. A visit takes in the Nasrid Palaces with the Court of the Lions, the Alcazaba fortress, the Renaissance Palace of Charles V and the gardens of the Generalife.

The Sacromonte Caves Museum is an ethnographic and environmental museum in the Barranco de los Negros, high in Granada's Sacromonte cave quarter. Eleven original cave dwellings are fitted out to show how their inhabitants lived and worked, with a cave home, a stable, a kitchen, a forge and basketry, pottery and weaving workshops, and a lookout facing the Alhambra.