Alcazaba of Almería
Interesting facts
- An old Almería saying claims the city had its Alcazaba when Granada was still a mere farmstead, a boast rooted in the citadel's tenth-century origins.
- More than 30 films and TV productions have been shot at or around the fortress since Cleopatra in 1963, among them Patton and Conan the Barbarian.
- Its fortifications run for roughly 1,430 metres in all, and it is often ranked as the second-largest fortress of Moorish origin in Spain after Badajoz.
- Stonemasons left more than 25 different geometric marks on its sandstone blocks, cut from nearby quarries still known as the Canteras Califales.
- On clear days the citadel's outline can be made out from about 55 kilometres away at sea.
- An earthquake in 1522 devastated much of Almería and left the citadel's first enclosure badly damaged.
- Around 1845 the fortress was fitted with a lightning rod whose three platinum tips were bought in Paris for 25 francs apiece.
- The eleventh-century Andalusian scholar and poet Abu al-Walid al-Baji is reportedly buried within the citadel grounds.
- A statue of Christ placed on neighbouring San Cristóbal hill in 1928 was blown up with dynamite in 1936 and replaced after the Spanish Civil War.
- The Alcazaba was declared a national historic-artistic monument in June 1931, and entry has been free since 1994.
Why it is worth it
The Alcazaba of Almería spreads along a ridge above the old town and the harbour, a chain of walled enclosures that is one of the largest Moorish citadels in Spain. Its walls, more than three metres thick, are tied into longer lines of defences that run across the ravine of La Hoya to the hill of San Cristóbal, so that citadel, ravine and hill form a single fortified landscape.
Construction began in 955, when the Caliph of Córdoba Abd al-Rahman III raised Almería to the status of a city, and the citadel was built in local sandstone over an earlier fort. It was enlarged under al-Mansur and again under Khayran, the first king of the independent taifa of Almería in the eleventh century; the stretch of town wall he built across San Cristóbal hill, the Muralla de Jayrán, is the section of the old city wall that has always stood above ground. The Alcazaba was both a military stronghold and the seat of government, with houses, baths, cisterns and a mosque inside. The first enclosure served as a camp and as a refuge for the townspeople in time of siege, and its wells raised water some 70 metres. The second held the palace city of the governors; a wall still standing on its north side belonged to the eleventh-century palace of al-Mu'tasim, and local legend tells of his favourite, Galiana, who slipped away one night to free a Christian captive. The former mosque was turned into the hermitage of San Juan after the Christian conquest of 1489.
The third enclosure, at the highest point, is a Christian castle built for the Catholic Monarchs, designed for an age of gunpowder artillery and grouped around a parade ground under its keep, the Torre del Homenaje. The Muro de la Vela, the wall dividing the first enclosure from the second, takes its name from a bell that warned of ships entering the bay, fires and danger. In the nineteenth century most of the town walls were demolished, but the Alcazaba survived. Its silhouette has served as a film set many times, from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to the Dorne scenes of Game of Thrones.
Getting there
The Alcazaba stands in the centre of Almería, about 1 km from the city centre, above the old quarter and the port. Almería Airport (LEI) is about 9 km to the east.
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From the encyclopaedia
The Alcazaba of Almería is a fortified complex in Almería, southern Spain. The word alcazaba, from the Arabic word, signifies a walled fortification in a city.
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