Travel Guide
Washington Irving
The Alhambra we visit today — the world's dream of Moorish Spain, a palace of legend and moonlight — is not only a medieval creation. It is also, in a strange and wonderful way, the invention of a homesick American writer who moved into its crumbling ruins in 1829 and, by the power of a single book, saved it and made it famous. The story of how the Alhambra became a legend is itself one of the best tales the palace holds, and it begins less than an hour from Cortijo Bujio.
By the early 19th century, the Alhambra had fallen far from its glory. Napoleon's troops occupied it and, on retreating in 1812, tried to blow it up — a Spanish soldier is said to have defused the charges at the last moment, saving the great towers. In the decades that followed, the abandoned palace was left to decay: squatters, soldiers and beggars lived in its halls, livestock wandered the courtyards, and weeds grew through the famous tiles. One of the supreme monuments of the world was, quite simply, a bewitching wreck.
Into this romantic ruin, in the spring of 1829, came Washington Irving — already famous as the author of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Granted the extraordinary privilege of living inside the Alhambra itself, he stayed for months, wandering its moonlit courts, sitting in the Hall of the Ambassadors listening to the wind, and — crucially — collecting the stories and legends of the ordinary people who lived among the ruins. His companion and guide was a local man, Mateo Jiménez, grandson of an old Roma family who had shown the palace to travellers for generations.
In 1832, Irving published Tales of the Alhambra — a magical blend of history, travel writing and the folk legends he had gathered: buried treasure, enchanted princesses, a Moorish king who would one day return. It was an immediate, international sensation. Almost single-handedly, it reintroduced the Alhambra to the world as a place of romance and wonder, and set off a wave of travellers, artists and dreamers heading for Granada. Embarrassed by Irving's vivid descriptions of the palace's neglect, the Spanish authorities finally began the serious restoration that preserved the Alhambra we see today.
It is a rare thing: a travel book that quite literally helped to save its subject. There is a plaque in the palace marking the rooms where Irving stayed, and his name is now woven into the Alhambra's story as surely as any sultan's.
Irving's Alhambra was also, in part, a beautiful fiction. His history was romantic and unreliable, his legends embroidered, his Moors seen through the soft focus of 19th-century Romanticism — the same movement, and much the same imagination, that produced the "Orientalist" paintings and travelogues of the age. That does not diminish the achievement; it deepens it. The Alhambra you fall in love with today is both a real medieval palace and a Romantic dream layered over it two centuries ago. Knowing that only makes the place more fascinating. (See our guide to Granada & the Alhambra.)
Who was Washington Irving? An American writer (1783–1859), author of Rip Van Winkle, who lived inside the Alhambra in 1829 and wrote Tales of the Alhambra (1832), the book that made the palace world-famous.
Did Washington Irving really save the Alhambra? In effect, yes. His book created such international interest — and highlighted the palace's neglect — that it helped spur the 19th-century restoration that preserved it. Napoleon's troops had earlier tried to blow it up.
Is Tales of the Alhambra accurate history? Not really — it is a romantic blend of history and folk legend, written in the spirit of its age. Its magic lies in the storytelling, not in the scholarship.
Can I see where Irving stayed? Yes. A plaque in the Alhambra marks the rooms he occupied, about 45 minutes from Cortijo Bujio.
Cortijo Bujio is 45 minutes from Irving's Alhambra. Read on about Granada & the Alhambra, the Alhambra Deep Guide and Moorish Andalusia.
Sources: Washington Irving, Tales of the Alhambra (1832); Encyclopædia Britannica, "Washington Irving"; Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife.