The gardens called Carmenes del Darro, and of which such charming descriptions are to be found in Spanish and Moorish poetry, are situated on the banks of the Carrera, on the same side as the fountain of los Avellanos.
The city is thus divided into four quarters: the Antequerula, which occupies the brow of the hill, or rather of the mountain, on which the Alhambra is situated; the Alhambra and its appendix the Generalife; the Albaycin, formerly a vast fortress, but now a ruined and depopulated quarter; and Granada proper, which extends into the plain round the cathedral, and the place of the Vivarambla, which forms a separate quarter.
Such is the topographical aspect of Granada, traversed in its entire width by the Darro, bordered by the Xenil, which washes the alameda (parade), and sheltered by the Sierra Neveda, which you perceive from the corner of every street, and which seems so near, in consequence of the transparency of the air, that you fancy you can touch it with your hand from the balcony or the mirador of your house.
The general aspect of Granada greatly deceives the ideas you may have formed. In spite of yourself—in spite of the numerous deceptions you have already experienced—you cannot bring your mind to believe that three or four hundred years, and streams of matter-of-fact citizens have passed over the theatre of so many romantic and chivalrous actions. You picture to yourself a half-Moorish, half-Gothic city, where open-worked towers are mixed with minarets, and where gables alternate with terraced roofs; you expect to see houses sculptured and ornamented with coats of arms and heroic devices, grotesque buildings, with their stories overlapping one another, projecting joists, windows adorned with Persian carpets and blue and white vases—in short, the reality of an opera scene, representing some wonderful perspective of the Middle Ages.
The people you meet dressed in modern costumes, wearing broad-brimmed hats and long frock-coats, involuntarily produce on you a disagreeable effect, and appear more ridiculous than they really are; for, after all, they cannot be expected to walk about, for the sake of the local colouring, in the Moorish albornoz of the time of Boabdil, or in the iron armour of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic. Like nearly all the citizens of every town in Spain, they think it necessary for their honour to show that they are not at all picturesque, and to prove, by the means of trousers and straps, their progress in civilization. Such is the prevailing idea which occupies their minds; they are afraid of appearing barbarous or backward; and when you admire the wild beauty of their country, they humbly beg you to excuse them for having no railways yet, and for being without steam-engines in their manufactories. One of these honest citizens, to whom I was extolling the charms of Granada, replied, "It is the best lighted city in Andalusia. Just look at the number of its lamps; but what a pity it is that they are not gas ones!"
Granada is gay, smiling, animated, although much fallen from its former splendour. The inhabitants are everywhere, and well merit the name of a numerous population; the carriages are handsomer and more plentiful than at Madrid. The sprightliness of the Andalusians fills the streets with bustle and life—things unknown to the grave Castilian, who, as he goes along, makes no more noise than his shadow: this remark particularly applies to the Carrera del Darro, the Zacatin, the Plaza Nueva, the Calle de los Gomeles, which leads to the Alhambra, to the square before the theatre, to the entrances to the parade, and to all the leading thoroughfares. The rest of the city is intersected in all directions by inextricable lanes of three or four feet in width, through which no vehicles can pass, and which remind you of the Moorish streets of Algiers. The only sound heard there is the noise made by the hoof of a donkey or a mule, which strikes a light every now and then on the glittering flints which pave the road, or the monotonous tinkling of a guitar which some one is playing at the bottom of a yard.
The balconies, furnished with blinds and ornamented with shrubs and vases of flowers, the vine-runners creeping from one window to another, the rose-bays raising their blooming flowers above the garden walls, the curious effect of the sun and shade, whose fantastic frolics remind you of Decamps's pictures representing Turkish villages, the women seated before the doors, the half-naked children playing and rolling about at their sides, the donkeys going backwards and forwards loaded with feathers and woollen tufts, give these lanes, which are nearly always up-hill and sometimes intersected with steps, a peculiar appearance which has a certain charm about it, and which compensates—nay, more than compensates for their want of regularity, by the novel and unlooked-for things you see.
Victor Hugo, in his charming "Orientale," says of Granada,—
"Elle peint ses maisons de plus riches couleurs."
This is perfectly true. The houses of persons at all well off are painted outside in the most fantastic manner with imitations of architectural embellishments, sham cameos on grey grounds, and false bas-reliefs. You have before you a medley of mouldings, modillions, piers, urn-like vessels, volutes, medallions ornamented with rose-coloured tufts, ovoloes, bits of embroidery, pot-bellied cupids supporting all sorts of allegorical figures, on apple-green, bright flesh-colour, or fawn-tinted backgrounds, all which, high art tells us, argues bad taste carried to its utmost limits. At first, you have some difficulty to bring yourself to look upon these illuminated façades as real dwelling-houses. You fancy you are walking among the scenery of a theatre. We had already seen houses illuminated in this manner at Toledo, but they are very much behind those of Granada in the extravagance of their decorations and the strangeness of their colours. As for myself, I do not dislike this fashion, which pleases the sight and forms a happy contrast with the chalky colour of the whitewashed walls.