Outline of the Nasrid house under the garden of Calle Real

UNDER THE GARDEN OF CALLE REAL THERE IS A HOUSE. That is, the archaeological remains of a Nasrid domestic structure that was located on the main urban axis of the Medieval medina of the Alhambra, what is now the Calle Real of the Alhambra.

Between the 1940s and 1960s, this section of the street suffered profound changes due to the reorganization of the access into the Secano and the transformation of the former convent of San Francisco into a Parador. The head architect of the Alhambra at the time, Francisco Prieto-Moreno, reconfigured the entire area, demolishing buildings, raising a wall following a new alignment and designing this garden as a traffic roundabout. In 1963, during the works, the vestiges of this house were discovered and the excavation was surveyed. In the end, the remains were covered by the garden, with the exception of a section of wall on the northern side.

The house follows the traditional layout of rooms set around a courtyard with central pool. It had refined architectural details, such as two sunken flowerbeds alongside the pool or glazed tile paving set within the threshold of the entrance into the eastern hall. Besides the mentioned wall, the other visible remains of the house are the baths that can be seen on the other side of the high wall that separates the Calle Real from the Palace of Abencerrages archeological area. The size of the house and the fact that it had its own baths point to the importance of this building and the probable high rank of its medieval dwellers.

This intervention makes the existence of the remains of this Nasrid house visible, showing how it was part of the historic layout of the Calle Real. Using the material remains of the wall as a starting point, the parts of the house described in the 1963 survey have been outlined, while the sections that have been hypothesized by the authors who have researched this structure have been drawn using dashed lines.