Alcázar of the Christian Monarchs

Few places in Córdoba pack so much history into a single site as the Alcázar of the Christian Monarchs, which looks out over one of the banks of the Guadalquivir. After the Mosque-Cathedral, it is now the city's most visited monument, and it forms part of the historic centre declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.

Several eras lie layered beneath its walls. The oldest remains belong to a late antique castellum, which was followed by the Umayyad Alcázar and, later, an Almohad alcazaba. When the Castilians took the city they did not start from scratch: they reused part of that Almohad fortress for the main entrance, the cross-shaped courtyard and the baths, and work on the new residence appears to have been completed in 1328, during the reign of Alfonso XI.

Its moment of greatest prominence came under the Catholic Monarchs, the last sovereigns to live here, above all during the Granada War. The emir Boabdil was held prisoner within these walls, regaining his freedom only after accepting vassalage to Castile, an episode that gives a sense of the political weight the building carried in those decisive years.

After the conquest of Granada in 1492, the fortress changed its character and became the seat of the Tribunal of the Inquisition, a role it kept until the Cortes of Cádiz abolished it in 1812. From then on it served as a civil prison until the Second Republic, and in 1931 it was declared a Historic-Artistic Monument, which today makes it a Site of Cultural Interest.

What visitors see today owes much to the major restorations of the 1950s, which prepared the complex for its opening to the public in 1960. Walking through it means passing, almost without noticing, from ancient Córdoba to Islamic Córdoba and on to Castilian Córdoba, with the river never far away.