Royal Chapel in Granada

Brief information

The Royal Chapel in Granada was built as a place where the political finale of the Reconquista was turned into a family burial vault. Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon chose Granada specifically for their burial: the city whose surrender in 1492 ended centuries of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula. The chapel is therefore important not only because of the names of those buried there, but because it links a specific building with the moment after which the city gained a new symbolic meaning.

It adjoins Granada Cathedral, but does not form an architectural whole with it. This is important for understanding the site: the chapel looks not like an ordinary part of a large church, but like a separate funerary structure wedged in beside the cathedral, the tabernacle, and the sacristy. The source text calls it the largest funerary chapel in Spain.

What to notice first

It is worth comparing the enclosed layout and the exterior appearance. The chapel has a single nave and an octagonal presbytery; on the outside it has only one facade, because the other three sides directly adjoin neighboring parts of the complex. In this way, the building’s arrangement immediately explains its position: it is an independent burial chapel, but almost all of it is squeezed by the surrounding architecture.

On the facade, the emblems, coats of arms, and mottos of the Catholic Monarchs are important. They do not merely decorate the Flamboyant Gothic and Isabelline style, but connect the funerary function with royal power. Inside, the same principle is continued by the ribbed Gothic ceilings, the polygonal apse with a wooden polychrome altarpiece, and the sculptural tombs. The strongest detail lies below floor level: beneath the tombs is a crypt, visible from the staircase, with the coffins.