TOWERS AND PROMENADE.
difficulty; the door opened to a range of vacant chambers of European architecture, though built over a Moorish arcade.... This fanciful suite of rooms terminated in an open gallery with balustrades, which ran at right angles with a side of the garden. The whole apartment had a delicacy and elegance in its decorations, and there was something so choice and sequestered in its situation along with this retired little garden, that it awakened an interest in its history. I found, on inquiry, that it was an apartment fitted up at the time when Philip V. and the beautiful Elizabeth of Parma were expected at the Alhambra, and was destined for the Queen and the ladies of her train. One of the loftiest chambers had been her sleeping-room; and a narrow staircase leading from it ... opened to the delightful belvedere, originally a mirador of the Moorish Sultanás, but fitted up as a boudoir for the fair Elizabeth, and which still retains the name of the tocador or toilette of the Queen. The sleeping-room I have mentioned, commanded from one window a prospect of the Generalife and its embowered terraces.... I determined at once to take up my quarters in this apartment. My determination occasioned great surprise ... but I was not diverted from my humour.”
TORRE DE LOS SIETE SUELOS—TOWER OF THE SEVEN STAGES.
This Tower is said to descend seven stories under ground. Four subterranean chambers have been investigated. Divers marvellous tales are related concerning this building, in which the Moorish kings are believed to have deposited their treasures. Here, according to fable, is heard the clash of arms, and of soldiers seen stationed to guard immense treasures.
LA TORRE DE LOS PICOS—THE TOWER OF THE PEAKS—
is a Moorish postern gate crowned with minarets. The openings in the Tower for dropping missiles upon assailants are of the time of the Catholic Sovereigns. It is said that the
THE TOWER OF THE PEAKS.