García Garrido visits the Silla del Moro and highlights the Government’s commitment to Granada’s cultural heritage

Luis García Garrido, Government’s representative in Andalusia, has been visiting today the Silla del Moro (‘Moor’s Chair’). The site will be soon opened again to public visit within the Monumental Complex of the Alhambra and the Generalife, after the second phase of its restoration, in which the Ministry of Culture has invested €794,710.
 
Through these restoration works, managed by the architect Pedro Salmerón Escobar, shape of the site has been recovered, close to the state of the Silla del Moro in the 60s, before the additions carried out by Prieto Moreno. Specifically, the Silla del Moro is a military construction, integrated in Granada’s defensive system designed in the 14th century. It represents, next to Dar al-Arusa and Alijares, one of the remains of medieval buildings liked to the Alhambra and the Generalife.
It was intended to recover this element as a Mirador affording a view over the city and as a means of understanding constructions built as water control of the Alhambra. In its beginnings, the Silla del Moro was a guard outpost to watch over the Royal Canal, but later it became a defensive structure and, after that, in Christian times, it was transformed into the castle called Castillo de Santa Elena.
The Government’s delegate has valued the restoration works carried out on the Silla del Moro and stressed the sensibility the Ministry of Culture has manifested to Granada, and specifically, to the Alhambra complex. With this, he reminded that that institution earmarked in 2010 altogether €658,565 for the restoration of the Puerta de las Granadas (‘Gate of Pomegranates’), and €560,000 in 2009 for the Islamic Cemetery.
García Garrido also reminded that recently, at the beginnings of this year, there was set a milestone of the recovery of these unique heritage sites in Granada by the public tender of the final adaptation works on the former military hospital at Campo del Príncipe, which will be the location for the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Granada. In this case it was the Spanish Ministry of Public Works who earmarked €7.29 million for this enterprise, in which also the University of Granada is collaborating with nearly €6 million.