Tales of the Alhambra

Tales of the Alhambra is a collection of travel sketches and stories by Washington Irving, first published in 1832.

Written during Irving’s stay within the palace walls, the book blends vivid travel writing with legend and folklore, turning courtyards, towers, and fountains into scenes where history shades into myth. Guides, monks, and local traditions supply the raw material for tales that drift between the everyday and the enchanted.

The pieces move from evocative portraits of Granada and the Alhambra to stories of hidden treasure, wandering spirits, and the vanished courts of al-Andalus. Throughout, Irving lingers on romance, superstition, and the afterglow of Moorish Spain, capturing a place where past and present mingle in the glow of late afternoon light.

As both travel book and story cycle, it offers a doorway into Spain’s layered past and a study in how ruins invite imagination. The result is a graceful introduction to Irving’s charm and to the enduring allure of the Alhambra.

"TO the traveller imbued with a feeling for the historical and poetical, so inseparably intertwined in the annals of romantic Spain, the Alhambra is as much an object of devotion as is the Caaba to all true Moslems. How many legends and traditions, true and fabulous,—how many songs and ballads, Arabian and Spanish, of love and war and chivalry, are associated with this Oriental pile! It was the royal abode of the Moorish kings, where, surrounded with the splendors and refinements of Asiatic luxury, they held dominion over what they vaunted as a terrestrial paradise, and made their last stand for empire in Spain."