The Alhambra as seen through expert eyes

The Alhambra is starting a new cycle of tours guided by specialists, beginning next Friday with a tour of the Honeycomb Vaults, led by the Head of the Department of Plasterwork Maintenance and Restoration, Ramón Rubio.
This first cycle entitled The Restoration of the Alhambra will also include tours to discover Wood in the Alhambra: decorated ceilings, on Saturday 4^th June at 10:00h by María José Domene, Head of the Alhambra’s Department of Paintings; and Elena Correa, Head of Restoration at the Alhambra, who will be guiding a tour on Mural paintings in the Alhambra and their restoration on Sunday 5^th June at 10:00h.
Those interested in taking part in these activities should book a place in advance, as only a limited number of tickets are available. This can be done online at www.alhambra-tickets.es or by calling 902 888 001. The new feature this year is that once you have completed your booking, you can print out your tickets at home, or if you prefer you can pick them up at the offices in the Corral del Carbón (Calle Mariana Pineda, 7, Granada) or at the Alhambra ticket offices. The price of the tour, which will last an average of two hours, is nine euros and the minimum age for participants is 12 years old, the normal age for beginning secondary education.
The second cycle entitled Art and Nature is scheduled for the weekend of 10^th to 12^th June. The historian Mª Antoñeta Bernardino Anguita will be leading her group through The Art of Agriculture and Science on Friday 10^th June at 16:00h, while the architect Virginia Brazille will be offering her view of the Carmenes of the Alhambra, and the Head of the Alhambra’s Gardens and Woods Department will be focusing on the Gardens on Sunday 12^th June at 10:00h.
Ceferino Ruiz, Professor at the University of Granada’s Geometry Department, will be designing an itinerary entitled the Search for Geometric Symbols in the Alhambra on Friday 17^th June at 16:00h. The next day the Head of the Woodwork Department at the Council of the Alhambra and Generalife, Gloria Aljazairi will be explaining to her party about Construction and Ornamental Techniques in Nasrid Woodwork. Finally, the main themes in the itinerary led by the art historian Nani Biedma Molina will be The Alhambra: Water, Architecture and Landscape.
All those who would like to find out more Keys to Understanding the Alhambra will have the chance to do so in the tours scheduled for 24^th, 25^th and 26^th June: The Alhambra, Character and Place, by the Alhambra’s technical advisor on conservation, Silvia Pérez López; Geometry in the Alhambra by the Professor of Applied Mathematics Rafael Pérez; and The Alhambra. Domestic spaces and uses by Elena Díez Jorge, Professor at the Department of History of Art at the University of Granada.
July will kick off with the cycle entitled Alhambra, creativity and inspiration. The main theme of Friday’s tour led by the Arabic language expert Naima Anahnah will be poetry; on Saturday it will be the turn of the UGR History of Art professor José Miguel Puerta Vílchez, with Codes of the Utopia of the Alhambra and José Antonio González Alcantud, Professor of Social Anthropology at the UGR will be rounding off the cycle with a tour entitled Alhambrism and Orientalism.
For more information please visit www.alhambra-patronato.es