This morning, we took a flight from Barcelona all the way down south to Granada. It was a quick 1 hour flight, much better than taking a 6-hour train ride!

We used an Airbnb in Granada. Since the check in was in the afternoon, we walked around Granada a bit before heading to the Cathedral. Here is a pretty walkway nearby.

Downtown, there is a monument to Queen Isabella and Christopher Columbus. It marks their meeting for the Capitulations of Santa Fe. This is the 1492 agreement that was signed in the then town of Santa Fe, Granada, which gave Columbus his approval and funding for his plan to sail here to the New World – and keep a percentage of the riches from future trade. The bronze statue was cast in 1892 for the 400th anniversary of the agreement.

Today, we visited the Granada Cathedral and Royal Chapel.

We walked past the line going into the Chapel before we got to the front of the Cathedral. I only included this pic so you could see the building designs. Sort of a mix of the gothic and Moorish styles you find in Granada and Seville (and other places in Spain, especially the south).

This Royal Chapel is the burial place of Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand of Spain. It was built from 1505 – 1517, finishing early compared to the huge amount of time it took to build the abutting Cathedral.

Here’s the front of the Cathedral – at least what we could see from one spot. The right and left sides go off a long ways out of sight. The Granada Cathedral was built over the city’s mosque after Granada was taken back from the Moors by the Spanish. It’s a shame so many mosques were destroyed by the Catholics in that time period. You’ll see when we put up the pictures of the Alhambra how stunning Moorish designs were.

The Cathedral was built starting from 1518, continuing over many decades – taking 181 years to build! The design includes elements from Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque design periods. Over one of the doors…

The interior was nice and light due to the white stone used. Much nicer than many of the dark Cathedral interiors we’ve seen.

As usual for fancy buildings of the periods, the ceilings were also pretty.

Many sculptures were around the perimeter. I liked this one…

There were two huge organs in the center of the Cathedral. Here is a great view of one of them.

One of the old confessional stalls around the perimeter.

More open space. It was nice there weren’t huge crowds inside.

I don’t recall what this was, but it was interesting looking!

A page of music from back in the day. I wonder how far away they all sat from this HUGE printed book? You could see it from quite a distance back!

As you can see, the top of the dome had stars painted in it. Here you can also see both of the organs. It would have been neat to hear them played.

Here is a closeup of the silver rotunda you can see in the distance on the above image.

Here is one of the naves. There were a number of them, so we didn’t include pictures of them all because it gets a bit redundant and some of them are just ugly(!).

Here is a closer view of the statue. This was one of the nicer naves since it wasn’t just covered in ugly gold-leaf.

After the Cathedral, we walked around some more and checked in to our Airbnb apartment. It was in a great location downtown.

The only negative thing about Granada as a town is that the roads are super busy. So when walking around you are walking amongst a lot of traffic, which is a bummer.