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Granada car
hire
Remember hire cars in spain offers the very best
car hire at Granada Airport and the
surrounding area.
Granada was first settled by native tribes in the
prehistoric period, and was known as Ilbyr.
When the Romans colonised southern Spain, they built
their own city here and called it Illibris. The
Arabs, invading the peninsula in the 8th century,
gave it its current name of Granada. It was the last
Muslim city to fall to the Christians in 1492, at the
hands of Queen Isabel of Castile and her husband
Ferdinand of Aragon.
One of the most brilliant jewels of universal
architecture is the Alhambra, a series of palaces and
gardens built under the Nazari Dynasty in the 14th
C.
This mighty compound of buildings – including
the summer palace called Generalife, with its
fountains and gardens - stands at the foot of Spain's
highest mountain range, the Sierra Nevada, and
overlooks the city below and the fertile plain of
Granada.
At the centre of the Alhambra stands the massive
Palace of Charles V, an outstanding example of
Spanish Renaissance architecture. Other major
Christian monuments found in the city are the
Cathedral, including the Royal Chapel where Isabel
and Ferdinand lie buried, the Monastery of La Cartuja
and many churches built by Moorish craftsmen after
the Reconquest, in Granada's unique "mudéjar"
style.
The hill facing the Alhambra is the old Moorish
casbah or "medina", called the Albaicin, a
fascinating labyrinth of narrow streets and
whitewashed houses with secluded inner gardens, known
as "cármenes". The Plaza de San Nicolas, at
the highest point of the Albaicin, is famous for its
magnificent view of the Moorish palace.
The Sacromonte hill, which overlooks the city from
the North, is famous for its cave dwellings, once the
home of Granada's large gypsy community.
The name Granada is ancient and mysterious. It may
mean "great castle", for the Roman fortress that once
stood on the Albaicin Hill. When the Moors came here,
the town was largely inhabited by Jews, for which
they called it Garnat-al-Yahud - Granada of the Jews.
The Jews are said to have been one of the first
peoples to settle in Spain, even before the
Romans.
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