From Pleasure Palace to Parliament: the Aljafería of Zaragoza
In 2016, two months before my beloved husband unexpectedly died, we visited Spain. We flew from Phoenix to Charlotte to Madrid, rented a car, and headed for Zaragoza, where we’d never been.
Small places packed with history such as Medinaceli and Calatayud distracted me, so we didn’t make it to Zaragoza very early. By the time we arrived at the main attraction (to my mind), the Aljafería Palace, it was only a few minutes before closing.
Nothing calls to me as strongly as a medieval fortification, but I knew I would need more time to see it to my satisfaction. We decided to leave it for “another trip.”
Spoiler alert: my sweet husband would not get another trip. He took a moment to appreciate the park around the moat and said, “It’s good to see people making use of their public spaces.”
Indeed, my love.
In February 2024, I finally returned to the Aljafería. With an excellent guided tour, I learned thrilling details about the uses to which the people of Zaragoza have put this fortified palace for 1000 years.
A Bastion of Military Strength
The oldest part of the complex is the bottom of the Troubadour Tower. Dating from the ninth century, during the government of the Emirate of Córdoba, it was part of a military camp protecting Zaragoza on its vulnerable western flank. This continued a Roman idea to occupy the area against assaults from the west.
In 935, Abd-al-Rahman III incorporated the structure as a watchtower meant to keep Zaragoza in line with his Cordobese califate. The bottom floor is constructed with horseshoe arches and may have been used as a bath.
It’s called the Troubadour Tower today after Antonio García Gutiérrez wrote a romantic play set here called El trovador. The emotive tale of star-crossed lovers provided the libretto for Verdi’s opera Il trovatore (1853). If you like exaggerated senses of love and honor, even unto death, check either of these out.
The tower has five floors and has served as the keep or homage tower for most of the building’s history. We didn’t see the inside on the tour, but don’t worry. There’s plenty to gawk at in the rest of the palace.
A Palace for Joy
When the Cordobese caliphate fell apart at the turn of the eleventh century, it gave way to the time of the taifas.
The taifas were a series of smaller Muslim-ruled kingdoms that arose throughout the former caliphate’s territory. From 1065 to 1081, Abu Yaafar Ahmad ibn Hud al-Muqtadir, the second taifa King of Zaragoza, had a palace built outside the city to enjoy respite from politics with his family and close friends.
They called it Qasr al-Surur, the Palace of Joy. The current name Aljafería is adapted from the king, Abu Yaafar, even though he’s come down through history as al-Muqtadir.
These elements are what qualify the Aljafería as the northernmost “Arabian” palace in the world and the only surviving palace of the taifa period.
Al-Muqtadir’s palace would have been surrounded with the attractive semicircular turrets we see today only on the eastern side, facing the city. The outside must’ve given the impression of an impenetrable citadel.
The inside, in true Umayyad-influenced Hispano-Muslim tradition, is another story.
After passing through metal detection (which is justified in light of the building’s current use; see A Historic Space Makes More History below), visitors enter the first courtyard. The only evidence of the taifa palace here is this stone, which has been interpreted as the foundation of an L-shaped front door passage.
The turns and switchbacks in these passages, which carried through into later Hispano-Muslim architecture, ensured privacy without closing off an area entirely. Its presence here indicates that the next space needs to feel open and relaxed even though it’s cut off from the rest of the world.
And does it ever. Visitors enter what looks for all the world like the orange patio of a Hispano-Muslim mosque, with its open-air courtyard, arabesque-adorned arches, fruit trees, flowers, and channels for directing burbling water into fountains and pools.
It’s not the type of paradise you expect to find north of Madrid. Even on a windy February morning, it radiated the sensation of a comfortable oasis.
Around this courtyard, al-Muqtadir had arcades and chambers. Some served official purposes for the few worthy foreign visitors, and some were private.
Since the orange trees weren’t very fragrant in this northern climate, this peaceful courtyard would have been fragranced with packets of cinnamon stashed into niches. No sense was left unstimulated.
Here, we see the arches in front of the left half of the chamber known as the Golden Hall. It was a kind of throne room, meant to make a strong impact on visitors. But how could the king make an impression when it was almost too dark to see, with no windows?
In this photo, some of the people from my tour are standing where the reflecting pool was. A pool was restored to this spot in the twentieth century, but it has since been covered with wooden planks for safety reasons.
From here, the clear water reflected sunlight for many hours of the day and beamed it straight into the Golden Chamber, where it then refracted off the king’s gold-thread clothing and jewelry. It would’ve been a sight as stunning as any in Andalusia.
As you might suspect, the delicate plasterwork surrounding the courtyard didn’t arrive in the twenty-first century in pristine condition.
As I’ll discuss below (see A Woeful Sight), twentieth-century restorers wanted to suggest the palace’s historical splendor without erasing the events that occurred between then and now.
Here, the arabesque-filled darker pieces of plaster are original, placed where the restorers felt certain they belonged. The plain white structures are modern supports for the historical pieces.
They followed the necessary shapes (polylobed and multilinear arches everywhere!) but did not even try to make up the arabesque carvings that were missing.
Note the remains of blue paint in this archway. There may have been a literal reason the throne room was called the Golden Hall.
This closeup on the archways into the Golden Hall reveals the only representation of an animal in the taifa palace: a pheasant or similar bird, perhaps symbolizing the king himself.
Here, inside the Golden Hall, the secretive archway that used to frame a private chamber of unknown use now displays museum pieces. On the other side, a similar archway leads into a small room with access into the Troubadour Tower. Note the gallery of jalousies along the ceiling.
On the eastern side of the northern portico, al-Muqtadir had a small oratory built and decorated with especially lavish plasterwork. The octagonal structure is too small to be a mosque and was only intended for the king’s closest relations.
The original Palace of Joy didn’t have to be big because not many people occupied it at any one time.
The remaining plaster in the oratory is darker not by design but by history. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this once-holy place served as the military barracks’ kitchen.
Nothing would’ve pleased the twentieth-century restorers more than to scrub away the grease and cookfire smoke, but they understood that the grime had penetrated the deepest levels of the ancient plaster. To clean it would’ve been to destroy it.
One of the most important things to know as an art restorer is when to leave well enough alone.
What remains of the mihrab is worthy of Muslim or mudéjar architecture to the south, and I wondered why I’d never seen a photo of it before.
This plasterwork was still being copied to great effect three hundred years later in deservedly famous monuments such as the Reales Alcázares in Sevilla and the Alhambra in Granada.
In spite of the impression of splendor, there are currently a lot of plain surfaces on display in this pleasure palace. In the private chamber off the Golden Hall, we learned the extent of what’s been lost.
The museum highlighted the finest pieces found during archaeological work, such as this frieze that belonged near the ceiling, but they don’t know where. It was discarded during one of the many renovations, and has not been restored to any spot in the palace so as not to mislead visitors.
The evidence shows that there was a lot to look at in this modestly sized pleasure palace. But wait — there’s more!
Plaster doesn’t hold onto paint very well, leaving only small traces for researchers. At the end of another gallery, the pièce de résistance was a small piece of modern plaster where, based on archaeological evidence, they’ve recreated the original colors al-Muqtadir and his family would’ve gazed upon.
This explains why it was called the Golden Hall! Eleventh-century people did not like to leave anything undecorated, and that included finishing it off with their favorite colors — all of them.
Such exuberance is to my taste, but I doubt people today in general would find this as pleasurable as the taifa king did.
Elsewhere in the building, protected by concrete brackets, we saw two of the original plasterwork arches from the taifa palace. In the late fifteenth century, many of these were destroyed to make way for Ferdinand and Isabel’s Gothic-Renaissance statement of royal power (see below).
But the architects sent these two arches to the Catholic Queen to dispose of as she wished. They made their way into the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid. Their current residence in the palace they were made for started as a loan for an important anniversary, and there is now a movement to make the loan permanent.
The National Archaeological Museum has recently been renovated, and I don’t recall a space set aside for these delicate wonders. They’ll do fine if they stay right where they are.
The final bit of architecture from the taifa palace (probably) had conflict in mind. It’s found behind the Golden Hall in the biggest chamber in the Aljafería (see A Ceremonious Medieval Palace below). It’s a cistern, but even more interesting than most mysterious medieval cisterns.
At nearly thirteen meters deep, this ingenious well fed off the Ebro’s water table. In order to attack this water supply, an enemy would’ve had to poison the entirety of Spain’s biggest river!
Even more evocative is the passageway accessible via the cistern’s five-meter-wide opening. It leads into the Troubadour Tower. This passage was probably a last-resort escape route for people who found themselves cornered in the Aljafería. If they could make it to the keep, they could fend off attackers for quite some time.
Even in a joyful place, kings had to think of every eventuality.
A Ceremonious Medieval Palace
The taifa palace survived two subsequent Muslim regimes, but in 1118, Alfonso I the Battler of Aragon occupied the Aljafería as the final step before taking the much-desired city of Zaragoza. It was adapted for the conquering army’s needs.
Today we can observe modifications undertaken during the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries, starting with the pointed polylobed arches on the western side of the main taifa courtyard.
Paintings of people and horses on surfaces that must have been flattened for the purpose outside the Golden Hall are from this period. The scenes that remain appear to describe how an army prepared for battle. The parts missing undoubtedly illustrated a great victory.
The Romanesque Church of St. Martin was built into what is now the entrance courtyard. The horseshoe arch at the right is the main entrance with its metal detector; the tower is a later modern addition because they couldn’t conceive of a church without a bell tower; and the church’s entry is the decorative portal.
The restorers knew the door used to have a Romanesque relief of St. Martin cutting his cloak to share with the beggar. This is their neo-Romanesque replacement.
Inside the church, we can admire the Gothic ceilings and a display of maps and books before checking out the tiny gift shop.
A few other medieval buildings have since been swept aside to make way for others, but luckily, we can still enjoy some of the rooms built for Pere IV the Ceremonious (r. 1336–1387).
Pere IV’s contributions are now principally ceilings, but what ceilings! The king’s library has lovely horseshoe and pointed arches harking back to the caliphal beginnings of this palace, but the most impressive part comes when you look up.
Along the top of the wall, King Pere had mudéjar (people faithful to Islam but living under culturally Christian government on the Iberian Peninsula) artists paint praises to God in Arabic letters. On the ceiling, he included many symbols of his reign, to include Christian crosses and Jewish Stars of David. It seems this ceremonious king liked to be reminded of all the people he was responsible for, even in his private library.
In a much larger chamber that now houses a banquet table, Pere had this ceiling built and painted. Unlike the plasterwork of the taifa palace, the wooden coffered ceilings of Pere the Ceremonious have held onto their paint for future generations. I’m fortunate to see them just after the latest restoration work.
In this bird’s-eye view of the largest chamber in the Aljafería, we see a different tour group gathered around the cistern we saw earlier and the back wall that’s actually the Troubadour Tower.
This was probably Pere IV’s throne room, because the coffered ceiling shows the coats of arms of his entire lineage and those of other important noble families of the time.
In this photo from below, it’s evident that though the shields are very high up, they’re still visible and distinguishable, and would’ve been even more so 600 years ago.
Both of these coffered ceilings are considered mudéjar art and a vast source of pride for Zaragozans today.
Architecture as Power for Ferdinand and Isabel
A scant century after Pere IV’s reign, his Kingdom of Aragon was definitively united with Castile through the marriage of medieval Spain’s power couple, Isabel I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon.
They’re known as the Catholic Monarchs because of Isabel’s personal devotion, but mostly because together, they defeated the Kingdom of Granada, making the entire peninsula “Christian” in politics and culture, even though actual religious practice was still diverse (at first).
This conquest finalized on January 2, 1492 (which would be a busy year), and one of the first gestures they made to consolidate their power was to modify the Muslim and mudéjar palaces all over their realm. Their modifications made sure everyone knew these deluxe spaces belonged to no one but Ferdinand and Isabel.
We’ve already seen some of their imprints, but their main gesture was to build a throne room directly on top of the Aljafería’s Golden Hall. The symbolism is all too obvious: the Catholic Monarchs are literally above the previous Muslim kings.
Additionally, the gallery in front of their throne room blocked the sun from the reflecting pool. Long before modern Zaragozans covered the pool for safety, Ferdinand and Isabel stopped it from casting its dazzling light into al-Muqtadir’s bejeweled masterpiece.
Something that might sound strange after contemplating such brutal symbolism but was accepted as the norm in 1492 is that the master of these building works was a mudéjar, Faraig de Gali. He effectively blended medieval with Renaissance sensibilities, but is most remembered because only he could’ve produced the many spectacular coffered ceilings in this part of the palace.
In an anteroom to the gallery before the throne room, this ceiling with its 3D coat of arms, symbols of the royal couple, and brilliant gold lorded their importance over the person waiting to see them.
It’s called the Hall of Lost Paces, because it has no furniture to sit down, and depending on what kind of impression Ferdinand and Isabel wanted to make, a person might be left here fruitlessly pacing the floor for days or weeks. The floor was indeed worn down in a pacer’s circle.
If you made it inside the throne room itself, you might not be able to tear your eyes away from the ceiling — in spite of the furniture and dressings, in spite of the fine floor tiles from nearby Muel.
In a ceiling that’s 66 feet long, along with the mesmerizing geometric inlays, symbols of Ferdinand and Isabel, and more gold than most nobles ever saw in one place, Faraig de Gali placed clusters of grapes that look like pineapples to modern viewers. The grapes tie into the Christian symbolism of the eucharist, for these are the Catholic Monarchs.
As if the symbolism weren’t enough of a signature, Ferdinand had the same Latin motto carved and gilded into the eaves of every chamber, laying claim to the construction:
Ferdinand, King of the Spains, Sicily, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands, the best of princes, prudent, courageous, pious, constant, just, fortunate; and Queen Isabel, in her piety and greatness of spirit superior to all women; distinguished spouses, with Christ’s help most victorious, after liberating Andalusia from the Moors and expelling the old and ferocious enemy, they ordered this work to be built in the year of Salvation 1492.
If the chamber was too big, the motto finished and started all over again. Okay, we get it!
My favorite feature from the 1492 reforms is this staircase. Here, the coffered ceiling is closer to the model proposed by Pere IV, but it’s still full of Catholic Monarchs symbolism. Note also the Gothic-Renaissance windows onto the taifa courtyard.
It’s memorable because, like most staircases of this period, it’s uncomfortable to go down. The steps are so long, you have to take another step on the landing and always descend on the same foot. But this time, the guide told us why it’s built that way.
She asked us to imagine the bulky, dragging gowns of the Spanish Renaissance court on those stairs. Of course! The extra space distributed the weight of the fabric evenly over the steps. If you were wearing one of those gowns, such stairs would be one place where moving along would be easier.
This seems like something they should tell you the first time you mention you want to be a historical novelist.
Modern Age, Modern Armaments
Though there’s less to look at today from the modern period, no ruler could keep their hands off the Aljafería, and renovations never stopped.
In 1593, Felipe II chose architect Tiburcio Spanochi to modernize the palace into a fort. He constructed an outer wall with four bastions and a moat with drawbridges.
Felipe II felt it necessary to display royal power and head off possible revolts at a time when the Aragonese were making a lot of demands of the crown. That’s why two of the towers could shoot at the city!
Soon after, the Aljafería became the seat of the Inquisition and remained so until 1706. There were few things the Inquisition needed more than prison cells, and Pere IV’s small quarters with his personal library were used for this purpose. This window near the royal library shows how thick the walls are — a prime space for prisoners to write and carve words and pictures.
In a nearby chamber, prisoners carved a chess or checkerboard into the floor. There were worse things they could’ve done.
During the reign of Carlos III (1716–1788), the face of the Aljafería changed drastically yet again when it became a military cuartel and arsenal until the first half of the twentieth century.
We didn’t visit the arms courtyard or the quarters of Carlos III, but this glimpse shows there’s probably not much of interest. These buildings still make up the entire back of the palace and are now used by the Aragonese regional government.
In the time of Isabel II, in 1868, architects added neo-Gothic turrets to the western façade to tone in with the rest of the palace.
The western and eastern sides look like they belong to different buildings. But the turrets were a valiant try.
A Woeful Sight
The Aljafería was declared a national monument of historical and artistic interest in 1931. In 1947, architect Francisco Íñiguez Almech took a critical view of its state after so many well-intentioned or opportunistic renovations, saying it was “a woeful sight in rags.” He spent the next three decades trying to restore some of its former glory.
After Íñiguez Almech’s death in 1982, the work was continued by Ángel Peropadre Muniesa, Luis Franco Lahoz, and Mariano Pemán Gavín. Their restorations were supported by archaeological evidence. Their main goal, aside from making the palace more faithful to certain periods of history while still being useable, was to differentiate original stones from their reconstructions.
This technique can been appreciated above: the lighter stones are the original ones, placed where the restorers were confident they should go. They selected the darker bricks that fill in the structure because they look nothing like the materials used during the taifa period.
The restorers didn’t want to insult history with guesswork. If they weren’t sufficiently sure what belonged in a certain spot, they left it blank, as seen in A Palace for Joy above. This was the case with the semicircular towers, which would have surrounded the Aljafería in the time of al-Muqtadir. But since the architects only had solid evidence for the towers on the eastern side, that’s the only side they rebuilt.
A Historic Space Makes More History
The Aljafería’s current use came about at the end of the twentieth century, when the Regional Assembly of Aragon selected the palace as its seat.
Franco and Pemán started work on the parliament building in 1985. Following their directive to avoid it passing for historical, its appearance is much like any building from 1985.
Every four years, Aragonese citizens elect 67 delegates to the single-chamber assembly: 14 from Teruel province, 18 from Huesca province, and 35 from Zaragoza province. They represent 1,300,000 people in the Region of Aragon.
The Regional Assembly has met here since 1987, making laws, important regional decisions, and more history for this 1000-year-old place.
In 2001, UNESCO declared the Aljafería a World Heritage Site for its mudéjar architecture.
A part of me mourns its many lost historical versions. But as my dear husband observed, it’s satisfying to see this wonderful place put to so many different uses.
