Parador de San Francisco (Granada)

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  Camelia Emilia Dujko

  Although the current name of this former monastery is the Parador de San Francisco, the part that interests us is not the luxury hotel, but the remains, embedded in its interior, of the orginal Moorish and Christian constructions, and which make it one of the most extraordinary buildings of Granada. Monastery of San Francisco: Under the Nasrids, this was the site of a palace, with its own mirhab or prayer room. When the Catholic Monarchs were laying seige to Granada, Queen Isabella promised that, after the victory, she would build a shrine in the Alhambra to her beloved Saint Francis. The monastery was installed in the expropriated Moorish palace, and when the Monarchs died, over the following two decades, they were buried here, in the monastery church, awaiting the completion of the Royal Chapel in the city below

  hace 11 años | responder | hide comment
• 
  Camelia Emilia Dujko

  The monastery, and most of the Spanish Church's enormous property, was expropriated by the State in 1835. The monks were driven away and the building was used as a tenement house and, finally, a donkey stable, until it fell into ruins. It was saved from demolition by a group of local intellectuals, in the early 20th century, and became a retirement home for artists. The roof of the old church had collapsed, but it was decided to leave the nave uncovered, creating the curiously-shaped courtyard we discover as we enter from the hotel lobby. Next to this "false" patio, we step into what was once the inner garden of the Moorish palace, and which the monks used as their cloister, rebuilding it in the classical style in the 18th century. The hotel keeps its roof covered with transparent material, so that it is no longer open to the sky. The only trace of the original garden is the water channel which crosses the floor, filling a rectangular pond. This courtyard was similar to the "patio de la acequia" of the Generalife, but on a much smaller scale.

  hace 11 años | responder | hide comment