Aljafería

The Aljafería is the finest surviving building from the taifa kingdoms, the patchwork of Muslim states that followed the break-up of the Caliphate of Córdoba. It was raised in Zaragoza for Ahmad al-Muqtadir of the Banu Hud dynasty and largely finished between 1065 and 1081. Al-Muqtadir called it Qasr al-Surur, the Palace of Joy, and wrote verses about its throne room, the Golden Hall; the modern name descends, through a chain of sound changes, from his epithet Abu Ja'far.

Behind a severe ring of walls and towers the palace opens onto the Patio de Santa Isabel, a courtyard with pools and porticoes where the taifa architects pushed the arch to its limits. Mixtilinear and multilobed arches cross and interlace until they read more like lace than masonry, and the plaster is carved into dense geometric and vegetal patterns. The small private mosque is the jewel: a square room with chamfered corners that give it an octagonal feel, a horseshoe-arched mihrab turned towards Mecca, and walls covered with blind interlaced arches. The Troubadour Tower on the north side is older than all of this, a five-storey defensive tower of the ninth or tenth century; its name comes from an 1836 Spanish drama set here, which Verdi later turned into Il trovatore.

After the Christian conquest of Zaragoza in 1118 the palace became a residence of the kings of Aragon, and each age added its own layer. Ferdinand and Isabella built new rooms between 1488 and 1495, including a throne hall whose carved and once-gilded wooden ceiling is divided into thirty deep coffers, each holding an octagon with a hanging pine-cone boss. The Inquisition set up its headquarters here in the 1480s, Philip II ringed the complex with a moat and bastions in the 1590s, and it spent the following centuries as a barracks. Restoration led by Francisco Íñiguez began in 1947; today the building houses the Cortes, the regional parliament of Aragon, and is part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing for the Mudéjar architecture of Aragon.

Getting there

The palace stands in the Almozara district on the western side of central Zaragoza, a city of Roman origin on the Ebro. Zaragoza–Delicias, the high-speed rail station, is a little over 2 km away, walkable or a short bus or taxi ride. Zaragoza Airport (ZAZ) is about 12 km away.