Located in the vicinity of the Cathedral, today's Alcaicería de Granada is dedicated to Granada craft shops, where the popular Fajalauza earthenware, wood inlay or marquetry, and colored glass lanterns are sold. It also includes businesses such as bookstores, jewelry stores and catering establishments.
Description
The Alcaicería of Granada is a typical neighborhood of Muslim culture, made up of narrow streets around which the houses were lined up and the souk or market where silk was made and sold was located. The Grand Bazaar of Granada extended from Plaza Nueva to Plaza Bib-Rambla, in the very heart of the Islamic medina, near the Aljama mosque. The origin of the Arabic name is Latin. When Emperor Justinian gave the Arabs the right to sell silk, they expressed their gratitude to him by calling all bazaars al-Kaysar-ia, that is, "Caesar's place"[1] In the bazaar, in addition to shops, inns could be found for merchants to stay during their stays. It was protected as a citadel, by means of a house-wall: a quadrilateral with fronts to the Zacatín (Saqqâtîn or street of the junk dealers), Tinte (Darbalcata or street of the inkwells), Oficios and Bibarrambla, provided with nine doors that gave access to the souk. , which were closed throughout the night, thus preventing the passage, and guards watched the interior streets.
Currently, in addition to being a tourist reference point, you can find countless Arab handicraft products, reminding and transporting the visitor to the streets of the Arab bazaars where haggling over the price is part of the tradition, and you can always get a gift for part of the merchants.
History
The first references to the Alcaicería of Granada are found in a letter from the Nasrid sultan Abu Nasr Saad in which the sale of two shops located in that place is made.
After the conquest by the Catholic Monarchs, it was renamed the Royal Site and Fort of the Alcaicería of Granada, due to the fact that, as it belongs to the royal heritage, it was placed under the government of the Marquises of Mondéjar, governors and general captains of the Alhambra and of the Kingdom of Granada. The governor of the Alcaicería was appointed directly by the governor of the Alhambra, always belonged to the nobility and resided in the commercial area. He was in charge of directing the surveillance of the premises, controlling the opening and closing times, and also the maintenance of the place through daily inspections. The complex was linked to the Crown of Castile from 1492 to 1868.
In the 16th century it had nearly 200 shops, all small in size with a single hinged door, painted red ochre, which also served as a shutter to protect the goods from the rain and sun. At that time, the mosaic pavement with Romanesque and Arabic motifs stood out, a number that was reduced by half in the following two centuries (117 stalls in 1787), due to the gradual decline of the art of silk. To alleviate its effects, other textile businesses were opened (cloths, linen, gold, linen), as well as leather work, shoes, cocoa, spices, etc. The complex was accessed through 10 doors (one more than in the Islamic period), from whose arches hung iron chains that identified it as a royal privilege and prevented the passage of horses, while on its inner side there were altars or tribunes with images devotionals dedicated to Our Lady. The cobblestone streets of Granada were narrow and produced a labyrinthine sensation, more because of their number than their layout, since it is thought that they were almost orthogonal. Many of them disappeared to build warehouses and orchards first, and then rental buildings.
The shops were concentrated in the western part, closer to Bibarrambla, where the mercantile character dominated. The administrative function was in the eastern part, which had some tiny squares and buildings as offices for the silk trade, for the almotalefe (inspector), faithful (accuracy of weight), gelices (custody and sale at auction), hafiz ( custody of the seal) and zaguacador (crier); also, the customs of cloth, linen, spices, sugar and silk. Of all of them, the most important was, logically, the last one, located next to the Placeta de los Gelices and Calle del Tinte. Distributed throughout other areas of the Alcaicería would be the house of the warden (inhabited by him or his lieutenant, the sotalcaide), the guardhouse and the room for the dogs, which were released at night to guard the complex.
There was also room for religious spaces, apart from the aforementioned tribunes of the doors and two mosques suppressed shortly after the conquest. There was a hermitage on the street that bears that name, at the crossroads with a side passage. It was the hermitage of Santo Cristo del Rescate, erected perhaps at the end of the 17th century and enlarged in 1743, to worship a devotional crucifix. At the end of the 18th century, it was renamed Our Lady, having a rectangular floor plan, with a nave section and a dome with a lantern.
On July 20, 1843, a fire broke out in a match shop on Mesones Street, completely destroying it. It was rebuilt in a neo-Arab and romantic style, very fashionable in the 19th century, by the architects Salvador Amador, Juan Pugnaire, Baltasar Romero and José Contreras. The original layout was modified, aligning some streets as well as widening some of them and reducing the space of their location.
The buildings have plasterwork arches on columns with cubic capitals, wooden lattices, germinated windows, cornices with a lattice pattern, eaves supported by carved wooden meats and, in general, abundant Arabic decoration.
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