temperament, is somewhat like an ancient and irrepressible comedian in
appearance. Its situation, on the slope of the mountain is sufficiently
impressive; its narrow, winding streets are serious and unresponsive in
character; but its colouring is strangely genial, even to the verge of
facetiousness. No two houses together are of the same colour; but orange
and blue, red and grey and green confront the eye from doors, and
railing, and windows, and from every bit of decoration that can bear its
dollop of paint. No design is allowed to restrict the freedom of the
artist’s fancy; the paints are daubed on irrespective of all the laws of
colour harmony, and without any reference to the feelings of the family
that live over the way. But the effect is decidedly cheerful and
waggish, and the cathedral uprears its head in the midst of it like a
Salvini in the middle of a crowd of Gaiety choristers. The silence of
Burgos arises in part from the lack of vehicular traffic, and, in a
measure, from the scarcity of women to be seen in the streets. Such
ladies as are about keep their eyes to themselves, and pass along
unheedful of the signs of life about them. But in the security of their
_miradores_, or high-balconied windows, they regard mankind with
perfect composure and entire freedom. So long as the beauty of Burgos
can only be contemplated by throwing back the head and gazing up at
“skied” windows, it is not a bad thing that carriages should be few and
far between.
La Granja wakes up for three months in the year, viz., in July, August,
and September, when the Court seeks in the altitude of the Palace a
relief from the heat of the capital. Madrid has no reason to be ashamed
of her elevation, but the Royal Residence of La Granja stands nearly
1,500 feet above the Palace of Madrid, and the Spanish people are well
pleased that the King should desire so exalted a spot in which to live.
The palace is a cheerful, if theatrical-looking French chateau, the
antithesis of the severe Madrid palace, or the proud, gloomy Escorial.
The interior is pretty rather than magnificent; agreeable rather than
impressive. But if French art has reared the building, the natural
surroundings are truly Spanish, and unmistakably Castilian. Around the
palace on all sides are rocks, and forests, and crystal streams, and
adjoining it are the palace gardens, which are at once among the finest,
as they are certainly the most costly in the kingdom. These gardens,
which cover an area of 360 acres, are an imitation, on a smaller scale,
of the gardens of Versailles. The formal cut of the ground plan, the
regularity of its avenues, the artificiality of the numerous fountains,
marble vases and statuary, and its dwarf-like vegetations is all in
striking contrast with the wild scenery on every side. In order to form
these grounds, rocks were levelled and bored for the water pipes to feed
the fountains, and hollowed to admit the roots of trees. One
fountain--the Baños--which shoots up water to a height of 130 feet, cost
Philip V. three millions of pesetas (over £100,000), but that monarch
confessed that the display had amused him for three minutes. The cost of
the gardens alone reached the enormous total of forty-five million
pesetas; and on the death of Philip V. his debts were found to be within
a couple of pesetas of that amount.
[Illustration: SEGOVIA--A GENERAL VIEW.]
After the magnificent scenery of the Alpine Nava Cerrada, the chain of
pine-clad mountain and the road, indescribably beautiful, that winds
through the dark woods to La Granja, the 6 miles that still separate the
traveller from Segovia are flat and uninteresting. But the dull, bare
country changes as if by magic when a sharp corner is turned and the
city bursts upon the view. The first sight of Segovia from La Granja
fills one with a thrill of rapturous awe. The rocky gorge, by which the
city is approached, is spanned by Trajan’s noble aqueduct; and beyond
it, from the bosom of a soft, green vale, rises the rocky ridge upon
which the fine old Castilian stronghold commands the surrounding
country. The prospect is indescribably impressive, and one fears that
the magic of the spectacle will disappear as we near it. But in this one
is agreeably disappointed. The drive under the huge aqueduct gives one
a momentary flash of realisation of the might of its Roman builders; and
then the road struggles ever upwards, past red, sunlit plazas and
curiously-fronted houses, beneath nodding roofs and under archways, into
the _Plaza Mayor_, over which lies the shadow of the grim Gothic
cathedral. The wonderful fairy-like “Puente del Diablo,” with its 320
arches, which rise, tier upon tier, to a height of 102 feet, is
constructed of granite, without cement or lime. It is indeed a lasting
monument to the enterprise, the resolution, and the architectural genius
of its creators. The great cathedral, one of the largest in Spain, the
old Alcázar which successfully stood out against the plundering
_Comuneros_ who sacked the city in 1520, and the eighteen lesser
churches, are for antiquarians and ecclesiologists: but the aqueduct is
a separate ecstacy that appeals alike to the layman and the expert.
[Illustration: A NATIVE OF SEGOVIA.]
Although it has points in common with Segovia, Cuenca, and all these
ancient cities of Castile, Avila, the home of the saint-like Teresa,
Spain’s lady patroness, with its granite approach and its massive
granite walls, its memories, its fortified cathedral, and its severe
menacing air, is as well worthy a visit as any city in Spain.
The Avila of to-day is the Avila of a thousand years ago--a mediæval
wall-girt city. Its frowning ramparts wear a strangely forbidding
appearance, and its countenance is an index of its character. Protected
by walls forty feet high and twelve feet thick, pierced by ten gateways,
and studded by no less than eighty-six towers, commanding at every point
the plain below, it stood from its foundation, until the era of
artillery, a city impregnable. Local tradition has it that Avila was
originally called Abula, after the mother of Hércules, and it is not
incongruous to associate this brave old fortress town with all the
heroes of mythology. The earliest authentic records of the city date
back to B.C. 1660. The cathedral, dedicated to San Salvador, the Prince
of Peace, reminds one of the futile voice that cries
[Illustration: AVILA.]
“Peace, peace,” where there is no peace. Nor did Alva Garcia, its
architect, gamble on its peace prospects; for its strong _cimborio_ was
evidently built for defence, and its apse, with castellated
machicolations, forms one of the towers of the city walls. From the
general character of the cathedral it is evident that although it was
commenced in A.D. 1091, it was not completed until the early part of the
thirteenth century, and it is much disfigured by some poor patchwork
restoration. Don Ramon of Burgundy, who rebuilt the city at the same
time as the cathedral, endeavoured to secure peace by preparing for
war, and the old church was pressed into the defence of the town.
[Illustration: CIUDAD-REAL--GENERAL VIEW.]
The “Royal City” or Ciudad-Real is a fledgling among the cities of
Castile, being little more than 650 years old. It was styled “royal” by
Juan II. in 1420, and Cervantes called it “imperial,” and “the seat of
the god of smiles.” Ciudad-Real may, in the days of Ferdinand and
Isabella, have worn a regal appearance, but the touch of a hand that is
dead no longer lingers about this dull, poverty-stricken, backward town.
The cathedral is vast, bare, and uninteresting; and when it has been
hurried through, there is nothing else of interest to detain one in
Ciudad-Real. Quite recently the tower of the cathedral partially
collapsed, damaging, but happily only to a slight extent, in its fall,
the beautiful dome of the building. The authorities, with commendable
promptitude, engaged a small army of workmen, and at considerable risk
removed the rest of the dangerous portion,
[Illustration: THE VALLEY OF THE JUCAR, CUENCA.]
and prevented further injury to the dome. As the tower was regarded in
the light of a national monument, a proposal to rebuild it is now under
consideration. Within ten miles of the city is Almadén, a town that
boasts no antiquity, and reflects not the shadow of a departed glory,
but rather provides the substance of a matter-of-fact to-day. For at
Almadén, on the confines of La Mancha, Estremadura, and Andalucia, is
the great and apparently inexhaustible quicksilver mine, which is one of
the few real sources of direct income to the State. These mines are
Crown property; and of the £250,000 worth of the mineral which Almadén
produces annually, a profit of £160,000 goes to the Government.
[Illustration: CUENCA--VIEW FROM SAN JUAN HILL.]
Rock-girt Cuenca is more picturesquely situated than either Ronda, or
Granada, or even Monserrat. It is built on a granite height, the base of
which is girdled by two graceful rivers, the Huecar and the Jucar, that
run their green courses through the most luxuriant of valleys, filled
with paths and groves of handsome trees. Terraced fruit gardens, rising
like a grand staircase of verdure, stretch up to the perpendicular rock
columns on one side of the city; and on the other it is guarded by
abrupt, wild crags that fringe it in a hundred weird forms, their
nakedness being modified, like the points of Monserrat, by lichens, ivy
and other trailing vines.
[Illustration: CUENCA.]
From the city one looks across the river-washed valley, over the line of
cliffs that merge into the distant mountains, and compose a scene of
grandeur and loveliness, of slope, and precipice, and fairy-like
verdure--a scene as grand and beautiful as one shall find in Spain. Time
was when Cuenca was known to the world by its literature, its arts, and
its manufacures; to-day it is no more than a back-cloth, a spectacle, an
empty stage. Its trade has deserted it; its artists and authors have
never been replaced. Time was when its mountains were the fastnesses in
which the brave Celtiberians waged their desperate guerilla warfare
against the Romans; to-day the Idubedan ranges are devoid of the
vigorous spirit of either Roman or Celtiberian. The
[Illustration: THE SACRISTY OF THE CARTUJA CONVENT.]
race of rich traders who peopled these localities in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries is extinct. The beautiful _pinares de Cuenca_ still
remain with their immemorial glades and rocks, their wild poetical
scenery, and their myriad squirrels. All that is left to Cuenca is its
history and its beauty, and if its history was great, its beauty is even
greater and more enduring.
Granada and the Alhambra.
To the majority of travellers who visit Spain the Alhambra is Granada.
They visit the city in order to see the wonders of the old Moorish
palace, and unless they can spend many months in the neighbourhood they
have no time to see anything else. A celebrated French artist declared
that a man might worthily devote a life-time to the study of the
Alhambra. Washington Irving, who lived for six years in Spain, and
nearly the whole of it in Granada, complained, in 1829, that the
Alhambra had been so often described that little remained to be said.
Irving added to the literature of the subject his great and fascinating
work, and it might have been thought that with this book the last word
had been spoken. Hundreds of thousands of words in all languages have
been written since then about the Alhambra, and yet I am not deterred
from adding my few pages to the pile. There are many sights, like
moonlight on running water, or the dancing shadows of feathery trees on
a lawn, or the Hall of the Two Sisters in the Alhambra, which inspire
one with _cacoēthes scribendi_, and the mania is not to be resisted.
Granada, which has been called the city of running waters, is another
monument of Spain’s decayed glories. Under the Moors it boasted a
population of half-a-million inhabitants; to-day it has but little more
than a tenth of that number. There must have been more virility in the
district under the Romans, who ever congregated where wealth was
obtainable, and who reaped a rich harvest by washing the gold in the
sands of the
[Illustration: GRANADA.
TRANSEPT AND HIGH ALTAR, GRANADA CATHEDRAL.]
Darro. To-day this vast source of revenue is practically neglected;
although, after the rains, a number of gold-fishers may be seen puddling
in its eddies. The beautiful and magnificent cathedral, the burial place
of the Catholic kings of mediæval Spain, the religious monuments--the
superb Cartoja, the Montesacro, containing the grottos of the martyrs,
the tomb of Gonzales di Córdova in the Church of San Geronimo, the
Convents of St. Dominie and of the Angels--and, above all, the Alhambra,
remain to link the city with its mighty past, but the only living
survival of its ancient activity is represented by the sand washers on
the banks of the Darro. Granada has gone to sleep. She is content to
doze in the midst of her beautiful gardens, encircled by her noble
mountains, rejoicing in the fruits that a fertile ground grows of its
own accord--content in her idleness and the variety of her beauty. If
she is reproved upon her condition, she replies with a yawn, and says,
as a witty Italian writer puts it: “I gave to Spain the painter Alonzo
Cano, the poet Luis de León, the historian Fernando de Castillo, the
sacred orator Luis de Granada, and the minister Martinez de la Rosas; I
have paid my debt; leave me in peace!”
So the visitor leaves sleepy Granada in peace in the hollow, and breasts
the hill, on the summit of which the Alhambra mounts guard over the
city. From the distance it presents, as do so many Oriental palaces, the
appearance of a fortress, and the approach is so planned that one comes
right under the shadow of its walls without obtaining another view of
it. A curve in the road brings one suddenly at the entrance to a grove,
the trees of which are so thickly planted that a man may scarcely pass
between them, and their mighty branches interlacing overhead defy the
sun to penetrate their foliage. An avenue pierces this park of verdure;
the shade is deep, but the air is soft and fragrant with the perfume of
flowers; and at the end we stand before a large square tower, dark
coloured and crowned with battlements, and entered by an arched door. It
is dowdy, commonplace, and unimpressive, but it is the Door of Justice,
the principal entrance to the Alhambra. But if the visitor feels a shock
of disappointment at this first close acquaintance with the world-famed
structure, it will certainly not be allayed when, having passed through
the gateway and ascended an embanked road, he is brought up before a
great ruined palace in the style of the Renaissance, beyond which stand
some miserable-looking little houses. The palace was erected by that
arch-vandal, Charles V., who, to his everlasting shame, planted a Gothic
Church in the middle of the Mosque at Córdova. The Alhambra has had its
full share of vicissitudes and desecrations. For a number of years it
was inhabited by smugglers and vagabonds, the French soldiers stabled
their horses there during their occupation, earthquakes have visited it,
and a gunpowder explosion destroyed some of the ceilings, but it
remained for Charles V. to outstrip the earthquake and the invading
armies in the work of ignorant spoilation. “But this,” one inquires,
aghast, “this rubbishly palace is not the Alhambra?” It is a relief to
be reassured that it is not; but the consolation is changed to amazement
when one learns that the Alhambra itself is contained among the wretched
hovels that lie beyond. But the suspense is nearly at an end; there is a
little door to be entered, a little courtyard to be crossed, and one is
in the marvellous apartment, which is at once a hall, a courtyard, and a
garden--the Court of the Myrtles. Two rows of Moorish arches, upheld by
light columns, stretch out on the right of the entrance one above the
other, while a tower rises on the opposite side; and in the centre,
extending right across the width of the _patio_, is a large rectangular
basin of water, which reflects, as in a mirror, the arches and
arabesques, and the superb mosaics which
[Illustration: GRANADA.--VIEW FROM THE “BARRANCO DE LA ZORRA” (THE FOX’S
HOLE).]
ornament the walls. The deep thrill of emotion and delighted surprise
that one experiences in gazing round this beautiful Eastern interior is
repeated again and again as one proceeds through the halls and courts of
this fairy palace. Moorish patios, with every variety of mosaic marble
columns, fountains, and flowers, may be seen in other cities of Spain,
but here are whole suites of courts, and gardens, and halls, vying with
each other in splendour, in regal magnificence and lavish expenditure;
while the situation of the palace is the most romantic and picturesque
in Europe.
[Illustration: THE WINE DOOR.]
The Tower of the Ambassadors, which contains two halls, one of which is
the great Hall of the Ambassadors, would alone earn for the Alhambra its
reputation for unsurpassed beauty. The walls and the ceilings are
covered with an enormous tracery of embroideries in the form of
garlands, roses, branches, and leaves, so blended as to make one
magnificent whole so delicate and intricate that the visitor could spend
hours in examining its inextricable network, and yet gain no more than a
vague impression of its detail. Gautier has compared these
ornamentations to “a kind of tapestry worked into the wall itself;” and
De Amicis, employing the same simile, writes of it: “The walls seem
woven like a cloth, rich as a brocade, transparent as lace, and veined
like a leaf.” The Hall of the Ambassadors is a spacious square apartment
lighted by nine arched windows, which, by reason of the thickness of the
walls, form nine alcoves, each supported by a little marble column and
surmounted by two exquisite small arches, surmounted in their turn by
two little arched windows. The views from these windows are entrancing;
and one turns from the handsome workmanship of the interior to the
magnificent landscape without in an ecstacy of sensuous pleasure.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE COURT OF LIONS.]
The Court of Lions is one of the most beautiful edifices in Granada, and
the finest and most elegant piece of Mussulman architecture of the
Nazarite period. There is not a more magnificent and fantastic example,
in or out of Spain, on which the artistic genius of the Arabs might
pride itself; and certainly its builder, the famous architect Aben
Cencid, is worthy a place with the most noted architects of all time.
Transparent arcades, columns which have been grouped together in large
and small numbers in order to share the weight of the beautiful arches
and ceilings, seven fountains, two high ornaments in the form of
temples, which advance majestically to relieve the monotony of the
cloister, four golden cupolas which gleam in the rays of the sun, eleven
different forms of arches gaudily decorated, constitute, as Don Rafael
Contreras, who restored the Alhambra, says, a magical and delicious
whole, even though seven centuries have elapsed. In the centre of the
Court is a great marble basin, surrounded by a little paved canal, and
supported by twelve lions--lions fashioned in the strictest accordance
with the injunction of the Koran, which forbids its followers to make an
image of any living thing. A glance at these lions shows how faithfully
the sculptors
[Illustration: GRANADA.
VIEW OF GRANADA, SHOWING THE ALHAMBRA AND THE SIERRA NEVADA.]
of these ill-shaped, grotesque, ridiculous monstrosities observed the
tenets of their creed.
Perhaps the most beautiful apartment in the Alhambra is the hall of the
“Two Sisters,” which, in its exuberance of ornamentation, richness, and
variety of carving and manifold combination of every line that can
produce beauty and grace, is beyond description. Fergusson has described
it as “the most varied and elegant apartment in the whole palace.” The
proportions are so graceful, the colours so bright and gay, yet subdued
into such exquisite harmony that it soothes while it enchants the eye;
and every portion, down to the tiles, bears the stamp of such refined
taste and infinite invention, that one looks around with a sort of
despairing wonderment, unable either to classify the various objects
that challenge admiration on every side, or to carry off anything more
distinct than a dream-like recollection, in which every element of
decoration is blended in a bewildering chaos of beauty.
The ancient Moors made art a virtue, and bathing an art. They did not
bathe from a sense of duty, but because bathing was a luxury. Here
between the Hall of the Two Sisters and the Court of the Myrtles is the
_Sala de Reposo_, where the favourites of the Kings prepared themselves
for their bath, or rested themselves after it. This hall, which was
restored by Spanish artists on the ruins of the old one, is in keeping
with the rest of the palace. A fountain occupies the centre of the
apartment, alcoves are set in the multi-coloured walls, and the
atmosphere of the whole place is cool, fragrant, and delicious. Around
this hall are the little bath rooms, each bath formed out of a solid
slab of marble. The rooms are lit by means of holes in the wall in the
shape of stars and flowers, a device which admits the glow of the sun
without its rays. Soft light and perfumes, rose-coloured curtains and
music, contributed to the sensuous delights of the Sultanas’ ablutions.
They may not have been a particularly intelligent class of women, these
dainty, languid-eyed sultanas; but they must, as an American tourist
observed, have been a “wonderfully sweet and wholesome kind of female to
have about one.”
From the baths one proceeds to the _Tocador de la reina_ (the Queen’s
toilet), situated at the top of a tower from which one obtains a
magnificent view of the surrounding country. This royal boudoir is
perched on the edge of an abyss. It is open on all sides and on all
sides a spectacle of amazing beauty is spread out to the view.
Immediately below lies the city of Granada, the houses interspersed with
groups of trees and huge bunches of foliage which seem to fight with the
buildings for every yard of land that the hand of man has snatched from
nature. Beyond the city is an immense green plain, over which endless
rows of cypresses, pines, and oaks thread their ways amid groves of
oranges and a riot of flowers. The deep valley of the Darro is almost
hidden by the profusion of vegetation that runs right down to the
water’s edge, and the silver Genil shimmers amid the groves and gardens.
Beyond the plain are the hills, their green sides torn by the rugged
boulders that thrust their way through the trees; and to the south rise
the majestic snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada, white and dazzling
in summer sunshine. The spectacle is one that can never fade from the
mind; the thrill it produces can never quite be lost.
The huge wall which surrounds the vast precincts of the Alhambra is
studded with towers which retain their original names. The _Torre de las
Infantas_ is one of the best preserved outwardly, and presents that
severity of outline which characterises the exterior of the palace, and
contrasts so strongly with the prodigal magnificence visible everywhere
in the interior. The Alhambra would be inexpressibly beautiful if it had
been
THE ALHAMBRA.
[Illustration: THE COURT OF LIONS.]