Aljafería Palace

The Aljafería is a fortified complex with an irregular quadrangular layout. Originally, it was surrounded by sixteen semicircular towers. The oldest surviving structure is the Torre del Trovador, a five-story square tower dating from the late 9th or mid-10th century. Its base features thick alabaster stone walls, while upper levels use lighter lime and gypsum concrete. Inside, horseshoe arches and cruciform pillars support the floors. Access was originally through a high door reached by a portable ladder, and the tower was once surrounded by a moat.

The main palace follows the design of early 8th-century Umayyad desert castles. It centers on a rectangular courtyard with water basins, flanked by royal halls and living quarters. The northern sector includes a two-story portico and the Salón Dorado, or Golden Hall. This reception room has a blind arch where the ruler sat, decorated with geometric patterns inspired by the mihrab lattice of the Mosque of Córdoba. The hall’s walls were richly painted in red, blue, and gold stucco reliefs, with alabaster panels and white marble floors.

A private mosque remains within the palace, oriented southeast toward Mecca. It features a horseshoe arch with distinctive S-shaped supports, columns with geometric leaf capitals, and a decorated frame called an alfiz. The mosque’s walls display blind interlaced arches and vegetal stucco motifs. Although the original octagonal dome is lost, the mosque’s mihrab niche remains intact.

The Patio de Santa Isabel is an open garden courtyard measuring about 24 by 39 meters. It retains the original southern water basin, while the northern basin is now covered. Surrounding arcades have been restored with polylobed arches based on original fragments. The southern portico displays a tripartite arrangement of polylobed and mixed-curvilinear arches with intricate laceries and vegetal stucco reliefs, considered a precursor to the decoration found later at the Alhambra.

Additions from the 14th century by Pedro IV include large Mudéjar halls with wooden coffered ceilings called alfarjes. A small octagonal wooden-domed chamber was built above the mosque. Pointed arches from this period were integrated carefully with the original Islamic structures.

The Catholic Monarchs’ renovation added a second floor over the northern wing. This included a grand noble staircase with geometric plaster balustrades and Gothic-Mudéjar window tracery. The ceilings are richly painted wooden coffers featuring heraldic motifs such as the yoke, arrows, and the motto “Tanto monta.” The Salón del Trono, or Throne Hall, measures about 20 meters long and 8 meters high. It has a coffered ceiling with intersecting eight-pointed stars and deep square panels containing octagons with central rosettes ending in pinecone pendants, symbols of fertility and immortality. The hall is surrounded by a gallery of conopial (lobed) arches with pierced parapets and a carved cornice featuring vegetal and animal motifs. A Gothic Latin inscription praises Ferdinand and Isabella and dates the hall’s construction to 1492.

The palace was originally protected by a wide moat about 20 meters across, with drawbridges on the east and north sides. Renaissance military upgrades added pentagonal bastions and a crenellated wall with a walkway for guards. In the 18th century, King Charles III remodeled the western façade and converted interior spaces into simple barracks rooms. Four neo-Gothic towers were added in 1862, two of which remain today.

Decorative elements include alabaster capitals, some reused from the earlier Caliphate period, marble floors, and polychrome stucco panels with vegetal motifs called atauriques. Inscriptions in Kufic script feature Quranic verses and the name of al-Muqtadir. Restoration has preserved many original Islamic and Mudéjar features, though much of the original paint and stucco decoration has been lost or repainted. Some original arches and decorative fragments are conserved in museums in Zaragoza and Madrid.

Today, the palace is surrounded by a small landscaped garden that separates it from the surrounding urban area.