Alcazaba

A short walk from the Cathedral in Malaga is the Alcazaba, a moorish hilltop castle dating from about the 13th century. While this is no Alhambra, is it still interesting.



It is much smaller than the Alhambra. Instead of driving up the hill to a parking lot and walking to the castle, this is a climb up through the gates and a winding path to reach the top of the hill. The wall runs around the perimeter of the hill as you will see below and in a later post.

As we learned at Alhambra, the water systems in these old castles is all gravity feed. As a result the water fountains did not squirt high in the air. These fountains may not today be gravity feed (no clue about this), but the height of the fountain seems period appropriate.

Inside we find architectural details clearly of the same period as Alhambra.

Some of the most interesting parts were the small details such as this modest alcove inset into a wall.

There are doors crafted with the iconic keyhole archways.

This lovely terracotta ceiling is very much like the ones we saw at Alhambra. But the decorations below it are much more modest.

The interior courtyard is similarly scaled down. After all, this is a provincial outpost along the shore, not the sultan's palace. You can also see the ground level aqueducts than channel the water everywhere in this place.

The ceilings in the small rectangular rooms are among the highlights of the castle.

The interesting part of this arched doorway entrance is on the underside of the arch.

Here you can tell how the decorations around the door were painted bright colors.

What we found here but did not see at Alhambra (we did not visit the museum there and mostly likely missed such things), is pottery. There was a reconstructed pottery kiln on display. Some of the urns were quite subtly styled.

In addition to the intricate designs on the walls, the moors produced very graceful shapes in their pottery.

Looking out from the seaward wall, we see a scene that is a bit startling. A 13th century castle wall surrounded by a 19-20th century city. It is humbling to stand in a place where time is so compressed.