Over 100,000 people visited the exhibition “Art and Cultures of al-Andalus. The power of the Alhambra”

The exhibition “Art and Cultures of al-Andalus. The power of the Alhambra” on display in the Chapel and Crypt of the Palace of Charles V, was visited by 115,277 people from its inauguration on 2nd December 2013 until it closed on 30th March 2014, according to figures provided by the Sustainability Laboratory of the Council of the Alhambra and Generalife.
Organized by the Consortium for the Commemoration of the First Millennium of the Kingdom of Granada, the Council of the Alhambra and Generalife and the al-Andalus Legacy Foundation, the exhibition received an average of 985 visitors per day.
A survey of the visitors showed that 21.29% of the visitors were from Granada and its Province, while 35.81% came from other parts of Spain, 23.62% from the European Union and 19.28% from the rest of the world. The report highlighted that 91.34% of the visitors were individual visitors, while 8.66% came in groups. Another important figure was the number of schoolchildren visiting the exhibition, a total of 2,179.
The exhibition, for which admission was free, traced a thousand years of history of the Kingdom of Granada (1013-2013) and was curated by Rafael López Guzmán Professor of History of Art at the University of Granada, José Miguel Puerta Vílchez, researcher and lecturer in History of Art at the University of Granada and Mª Jesús Viguera Molins Professor from the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Complutense University in Madrid.
Over 70 institutions took part by lending pieces, as did several private collections. These institutions included the Council of the Alhambra and Generalife, the El Escorial Royal Library, the Spanish Royal Armoury, the Granada Archaeological Museum, the University of Granada, the Spanish Royal Academy of History, Toledo Cathedral, Granada Cathedral, the Museum of Segovia, the Spanish Senior Research Council, Córdoba Municipal Library, the Museum of Mallorca, the Lázaro Galdiano Museum, the Army Museum in Toledo, the Instituto Valencia de Don Juan and the Historical Archives of the Province of Granada.
The route followed by the exhibition continued inside the Nasrid Palaces, where a number of spaces normally closed to the public had been restored and opened to the public to coincide with the exhibition.
The exhibition had over 300 pieces including a number of emblematic exhibits: the tunic worn by the last Sultan of Granada, Boabdil, his rapier, the Capitulations, the official document in which Boabdil surrendered to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and the diplomatic correspondence between the Sultans of Granada and other Kingdoms.
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