Review: Tales of the Alhambra

Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A surprisingly good read. I picked this up to read as I was traveling to Granada, Spain, and wanted to read something sited in the city. It was perfect!

The Alhambra is a huge palace complex atop a hill next to the city of Granada, with many gardens, small palaces, a fort, towers, a huge wall encircling everything. Supposedly, there are many legends surrounding the place, and I wanted to learn about them. The book narrates a some of these legends, and some of the history behind them, but it's actually mostly talking about the people and the place as a whole, about what it looks like and what it feels to be there. It talks about the trip of the author to Granada and his stay at the Alhambra in 1828, and about the people he met there. It's very straightforward, without much dramatization. It reads as a product of the time, with conservative views on the roles of nobles, the working classes, and of women, but taken as a historical product, it's understandable. Some of the stories were interesting, and at least one of them (about Philip V and his hypochondria) was very funny.

I am not sure I would recommend it normally, but if you are traveling to Spain, this is a must-read!


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