1. Palace of Charles V2. Apartments of Emperor Charles V: Queen’s Rooms and Closet3. Church of Santa María de la Alhambra4. Convent of San Francisco (now Parador Nacional)5. Generalife (Renaissance Gardens)6. Walled precinct (Bastions – Tendilla Cistern – Gate of the Seven Floors and Gate Of Justice)7. Basin of Charles V8. Gate of the Pomegranates – Russet Towers and Ravelin910. Church of Santa Ana11. Castril House12. Monastery of Santa Isabel La Real – Palace of Dar Al-Horra13. Hospital of San Juan de Dios14. Royal Monastery of San Jerónimo15. Cathedral16. The Madrasa17. Ecclesiastical Curia18. Plaza de Bibarrambla, Alcaicería and Zacatín19. Imperial Church of San Matías20. Casa de los Tiros21. Royal Chapel and Merchants’ Exchange
Plaza Nueva – Chancellery
The current Plaza Nueva (New Plaza) is the result of various phases in the development of the city from the Islamic period until the start of the 20th century.
In the Islamic period, the River Darro flowed in the open through this part of the city. To link the two banks, there were two bridges which ended on each side in the labyrinth of alleyways habitual in the urban layouts of the period. After the arrival of Ferdinand and Isabella, the local city council proposed that the city should be provided with a representative open space in the Castilian manner. For this purpose, the River Darro was first to be covered over, and large numbers of dwellings were to be expropriated and demolished to ensure ample room for the new plaza.
In the 19th century, the area occupied by today's Plaza Nueva was configured as three different plazas, but the flooding of the Darro in 1835 and the demolition of the church of San Gil made it possible to extend it to its current size and form.
The plaza had many different uses: a market place, a parade ground, a place of execution, and a setting for processions and bonfire festivals.
The construction of the Royal Chancellery originated in Ferdinand and Isabella's idea of turning Granada into the capital of the kingdom by transferring there one of the two Chancelleries then in existence, that of Ciudad Real. The Tribunal was initially housed in the Alcazaba Cadima in the Albaicín district, in the street known for that reason as Calle de Oidores (Street of the Magistrates). It was subsequently moved to the more central location where it now stands, and the new building became one of the most important public edifices constructed in Granada in the first half of the 16th century, during the reign of Charles V. Its construction began in 1531.
It is built on a square plan with a porticoed courtyard in the centre, reached from the vestibule by flights of stairs. Distributed around this are the various rooms of the building.
The configuration of the Plaza Nueva forms part of the new urban concept of ample public spaces initiated by Ferdinand and Isabella after the conquest in order to transform the Islamic city, and it represents a considerable feat of engineering. Subsequently, it was here that Charles V transferred the High Court of Justice, or Chancellery, created by his grandparents for judicial litigation in the southern half of the country, constituting a crucial instrument for the modernisation of the state. By locating it in Granada, the role the recently conquered city was to play in the administration of the new State was clearly emphasised. The very large building acquired its full representative and symbolic value with the façade constructed at the order of Philip II in about 1586 to a design by Francisco del Castillo "the younger", an architect and sculptor who had trained in Rome with Ammanati and Vignola, who brought the style of the Italian "Terza Maniera" initiated by Michelangelo to this edifice.
Justice, a theme and allegory which dominates this building, is inseparable from the notion of Peace, cultivated by the dispensation and regulation of Justice, and all the more given that the façade was constructed after the bloody war that followed the Moorish uprising of 1568.
