Southern Spain, Painted by Trevor Haddon, Described by A. F. CalvertCalvert, Albert Frederick
History
Southern Spain, Painted by Trevor Haddon, Described by A. F. Calvert
Calvert, Albert Frederick
Spain -- Description and travel
In this hall a temporary chapel was set up, and mass was celebrated, on
the taking of the city by the Spaniards.
[Illustration: GRANADA--TOCADOR DE LA REINA]
Crossing the Hall of the Two Sisters, we enter the beautiful Mirador de
"Lindaraja," the most charming and elegant of all the apartments in the
palace. Through three tall windows, once filled with coloured crystals,
we look down into the pretty Patio de Daraxa, which, like the chamber,
does not derive its name from an imaginary sultana, but from a word
meaning "vestibule." It is a delightful garden, where shade is always to
be obtained between the closely planted cypresses, orange, and peach
trees, rising between twin hedges of box and bushes of rose and myrtle.
In the centre is a seventeenth-century fountain. Here you will always
find some artist committing to canvas his impressions of one of the
fairest gardens men have fashioned for themselves.
The rooms on the other side of the patio were built by Charles V., and
include the Tocador de la Reina, or Queen's Boudoir, a prettily
decorated belvedere affording an entrancing view. It was in this room
that Washington Irving took up his quarters. Théophile Gautier slept
sometimes in the hall of the Abencerrages, sometimes in that of the Two
Sisters, and was impressed by the eerieness of the palace at night. Yet
there is not a manor-house in England or a château in France that is not
more suggestive of the spectral and uncanny than these gilded halls and
open courts. However, everyone has his own preconceptions of the weird
and the picturesque.
From the Patio de Daraxa we enter the very interesting Baths, ably
restored by the late Don Rafael Contreras. The Sala de las Camas, or
chamber of repose, is among the most brilliantly decorated rooms in the
palace, yet, as elsewhere in this neglected pile, the gilding is being
suffered to fade and the tiling in the niches, I noticed, is loosening
and breaking up. From a gallery running round the chamber, the music of
the odalisques was wafted down to the sultan reclining in one of the
divans below. He must have been in no hurry to leave this spot, where he
dreamily puffed at his hubble-bubble and watched the play of the
fountain. The light came from apertures in the superb artesonado
ceiling. Without, on a stone seat, the eunuchs mounted guard and
preserved their lord's repose from interruption. The actual baths are
contained in two adjacent chambers. A staircase ascended to the Hall of
the Two Sisters above, for the use, not improbably, of the ladies of the
harem. On leaving the baths you may follow the tunnel across the
uninteresting Patio de la Reja and beneath the Tower of Comares, to the
Patio del Mexuar.
[Illustration: GRANADA--TORRE DE LAS DAMAS]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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