Reconquista

For this week’s blog, I studied the cities of Granada and Santa Fe de Granada, both located in Spain. These cities are situated very close to one another in the region of Spain that was once under Islamic control. In 1492, the Catholic Monarchs from Spain conquered the territory, bringing with it a new era of urban form and religion. 

In Granada before the reconquering, it was a Medieval and Islamic controlled city with its respective forms and monuments. When it was conquered, the Spanish brought Gothic, Renaissance and Classical architecture to fill the city and meld the Spanish-Muslim cultures. Also, to ensure that the Spanish were considered the conquerers, they needed to establish their own identity within the city. They did add the Renaissance and Classic architecture and adornments, but they also added monuments to juxtapose those of the Islamic order (such as the Palace of Charles V). Compared to Santa Fe, which was a grid-planned and Spanish created city, Granada was and still remains an organic city. 

Granada-Alhambra
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alhambra_de_Granada,_vista_general_(Spain).jpg
(accessed March 22, 2013).

Granada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PanoGranada1.jpg
(accessed March 22, 2013).

Palace of Charles V
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Palacio_Carlos_V_west.jpg
(accessed March 22, 2013).

In the effort to conquer Granada, Santa Fe was established by the Catholic Monarchs as a fortified military camp. By doing so, they were able to deliver a serious blow to the fortified center of Granada- Alhambra. 

Santa Fe is built in the same manner as Roman and Spanish cities (such as Thamugadi and Tenochtitlán) because they are all built in a grid-plan format. This suggests that it was built to establish the new order of the conquerer and to set up the control of the Catholic Monarchs. 

With a place of control directly outside of Granada, this allowed them to establish a force strong enough to take the Islamic city. Not only that, but it probably brought in the new Spanish architectural form. While it was introduced in Santa Fe, it was slowly established in Granada, bringing together a mesh of different architectural forms. 

Today, Santa Fe has some relics of its grid-plan, though the walls that once surrounded the city are no longer there, the four gates that intersected the wall still remain (this suggests that there was a certain flow to the city). 

Santa Fe de Granada (aerial view)
http://hotelesandalucia.es/UserFiles/images/pueblos/Granada/santafe/555.jpg
(accessed March 22, 2013).

Santa Fe was a new center created to conquer and juxtapose Granada and to ensure that the Spanish were in power. Today, what can be seen of the two cities’ relationship is the architectural styles of the conquering Spanish, and the monuments that still remain.   

That's all for now!

I'm off.