The Aljafería Palace is a fortified palace built in Zaragoza in
the second half of the 11th century at the initiative of al-Muqtadir
as the residence of the Hudi kings of Saraqusta . This recreational
palace (called then Qasr al-Surur or 'Palace of Joy') reflects the
splendor achieved by the Taifa kingdomin the period of its maximum
political and cultural apogee.
Its importance lies in the
fact that it is the only preserved testimony of a great
Hispano-Muslim art building from the time of the taifas. So, if a
magnificent example of the Caliphate of Córdoba is preserved , its
mosque ( 10th century ), and another of the swan song of Islamic
culture in al-Andalus , from the 14th century , the Alhambra in
Granada , should be included in the triad of Hispano-Muslim
architecture the Aljafería palace in Zaragoza ( 11th century ) as a
sample of the achievements of Taifa art , an intermediate period of
independent kingdoms prior to the arrival of theAlmoravids . The
"Mudéjar remains of the Aljafería Palace" were individually declared
a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1986 as part of the " Mudéjar
Architecture of Aragon " complex .
The solutions adopted in
the ornamentation of the Aljafería palace, such as the use of
mixtilinear arches and "S" shaped salmeras , the extension of the
openwork ataurique on large surfaces or the schematization and
progressive abstraction of the plant-based plasterwork , had a
decisive influence in Almoravid and Almohad art from both the
Maghreb and the Iberian Peninsula . Likewise, the transition of the
decoration towards more geometric motifs is at the base of Nasrid
art .
After the conquest of Zaragoza in 1118 by Alfonso I the
Battler, it became the residence of the Christian kings of Aragon ,
with which the Aljafería became the main source of dissemination of
Aragonese Mudejar . It was used as a royal residence by Pedro IV the
Ceremonious (1319-1387) and later, on the main floor, the reform was
carried out that turned these rooms into the palace of the Catholic
Monarchsin 1492. In 1593 it underwent another reform that would turn
it into a military fortress, first according to Renaissance designs
(which today can be seen in its surroundings, moat and gardens) and
later as a quartering for military regiments. It underwent
continuous reforms and great damage, especially with the Sieges of
Zaragoza from the War of Independence until it was finally restored
in the second half of the 20th century and currently houses the
Courts of Aragon .
Originally, the construction was made
outside the walls of the Roman wall, on the plain of the saría or
place where the Muslims carried out their military displays known as
La Almozara . With urban expansion over the years, the building has
remained within the city. It has been possible to respect a small
garden environment around it.
The oldest building in the Aljafería is the so-called "Trovador's
Tower", which received its name from the romantic drama by Antonio
García Gutiérrez , El trovador , from 1836. This drama was turned into a
libretto for Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il trovatore , from 1853.
It
is a defensive tower, with a quadrangular plan and five floors, dating
from the end of the 9th century (according to Bernabé Cabañero Subiza,
from the second half of the 10th century ), in the period governed by
the first Tujib , Muhammad Alanqar , who it was named for Muhammad I ,
independent emir of Córdoba . The tower maintains vestiges of the start
of the thick alabaster ashlar masonry walls in its lower part, and
continued with other simple concrete formwork of plaster and lime,
somewhat thinner as it gained height.
The exterior does not
reflect the internal division into five floors and appears as an
enormous solid prism barely broken by loophole openings. The entrance to
the interior was made through a small door in height that could only be
accessed by means of a portable ladder. Its initial function was, by all
these indications, eminently military.
The first floor preserves
the constructive structure of the 9th century , which houses two naves
and six sections separated by two cruciform pillars from which lowered
horseshoe arches start . Despite their simplicity, they make up a
balanced room, which rhythms the ceiling in the manner of Caliphate
mosques and could have been used as bathrooms.
the second floor
repeats the same spatial scheme as the previous one, and remains of a
muslim factory from the 11th century can be seen in the brick walls,
which indicates that the second floor was possibly rebuilt at the same
time as the palace in the time of Al- muqtadir. On the third floor,
whose structure would also be from the 11th century , with horseshoe
arches, Mudejar geometric motifs are painted on the ceiling where the
names of Aeneas, Amor and Venus can be read, possibly dating from the
14th century .
Something similar occurs with the appearance of
the last two floors, of Mudejar style, and whose construction was due to
the construction of the annexed Pedro IV palace , which is connected to
the troubadour tower thanks to a corridor, and would thus be configured
as a tower of the homage The arches on these floors already reflect its
Christian structure, since they are slightly pointed arches, and support
roofs that are not vaulted, but rather flat wooden structures.
Its function in the 9th and 10th centuries was that of a watchtower and
defensive bastion. It was surrounded by a moat. It was later integrated
by the Banu Hud in the construction of the castle-palace of the
Aljafería, becoming one of the towers of the defensive framework of the
outer north canvas. After the Spanish reconquest, it continued to be
used as a keep and in 1486 it became a dungeon for the Inquisition . It
was also used as a prison tower in the 18th and 19th centuries, as
evidenced by the numerous graffiti inscribed there by the inmates.
The construction of the palace —most of it carried out between 1065
and 1081— was ordered by Abu Ja'far Ahmad ibn Sulaymán al-Muqtadir
Billah , known by his honorary title of Al-Muqtadir ('the Mighty'),
second monarch from the Banu Hud dynasty , as a symbol of the power
achieved by the Zaragoza Taifa in the second half of the 11th century .
The name of Aljafería is documented for the first time in a text by
Al-Yazzar as-Saraqusti (active between 1085 and 1100) —which also
transmits the name of the architect of the Taifal palace, the Slavic
Al-Halifa Zuhayr— and another from Ibn Idari from 1109, as a derivation
of Al-Muqtadir's prename, Abu Ja'far, and from "Ya'far", "Al-Yafariyya",
which evolved to "Aliafaria" and from there to "Aljafería".
The
general layout of the palace complex adopts the archetype of the Umayyad
castles in the desert of Syria and Jordan from the first half of the 8th
century , (such as Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi , Qusair Mushatta , Jirbat
al-Mafyar and , already from the first Abbasid stage , the palace of
Ujaidir ) which had a square floor plan and ultra-semicircular towers on
the walls, with a tripartite central space, which leaves three
rectangular spaces of which the central one houses a patio with
poolsand, at the northern and southern ends of it, the palatial halls
and the dependencies of daily life.
In the Aljafería, homage is
paid to this model of castle-palace, whose main area is located in the
central segment of its square plan, although the alignment of the sides
of that plan is irregular. It is the central rectangle that houses the
palatial rooms, organized around a patio with cisterns in front of the
north and south porticos into which the royal rooms and halls flow.
At the north and south ends are the porticos and rooms, and in the
case of the Aljafería, the most important of these sectors is the north,
which originally had a second floor and was deeper, as well as being
preceded by an open and profusely decorated front of columns, which
extended into two arms through two pavilions on its flanks and which
served as a theatrical portico to the throne room (the golden room of
Al-Muqtadir's verses) located at the back. This produced a game of
heights and different cubic volumes that began with the perpendicular
corridors at the ends, stood out with the presence of the height of the
second floor and ended with the troubadour tower that offered its volume
in the background to the gaze of a spectator located in the courtyard.
all this,mihrab .
In the center of the north wall inside the
Golden Room there was a blind arch —where the king was located— in whose
thread a very traditional geometric pattern was arranged, imitating the
latticework of the façade of the mihrab of the Mosque of Córdoba, a
building to which he sought to emulate. In this way, from the courtyard,
it appeared semi-hidden by the grid of columns both in the archway
leading to the Golden Room and in the immediate portico, which gave a
lattice-like appearance, an illusion of depth, which admired the visitor
and lent splendor to the figure of the monarch.
To recall the
appearance of the palace at the end of the 11th century, one must
imagine that all the vegetal, geometric and epigraphic reliefs were
polychrome in tones in which red and blue predominated for the
backgrounds and gold for the reliefs, which, together with the alabaster
baseboards with epigraphic decoration and the white marble flooring,
gave the whole an appearance of great magnificence.
The various
vicissitudes suffered by the Aljafería have made a large part of the
stucco that made up the decoration disappear from this layout of the
11th century and , with the construction of the palace of the Catholic
Monarchs in 1492, the entire second floor, which broke the tops of the
taifal arches. In the current restoration, the original atauriques can
be seen in a darker color and in white and smooth finishes the plaster
reconstruction of the decoration of the arches, whose structure, yes,
remains unscathed.
The decoration of the walls of the Golden Room
has disappeared for the most part, although remains of its ornamentation
are preserved in the Museum of Zaragoza and in the National
Archaeological Museum of Madrid . Francisco Íñiguez began its
restoration, replacing the decorations that existed in their places of
origin and extracting complete casts from the arcades of the south
portico.
These were the functions and appearance of the 11th
century Hudi palace . Below are the most important parts of the building
as they are today.
The most important set of dependencies of the palace from the Hudi
era is built on the north end, as it includes the Throne Room or Golden
Room and the small private mosque, located on the eastern side of the
access portico that serves as an antechamber to the oratory . Inside it
houses a mihrab in the southeast corner, whose niche, therefore, is
oriented in the direction of Mecca , as occurs in all mosques except the
one in Córdoba.
The floors of the royal rooms were made of marble
and an alabaster skirting ran through them. The capitals were made of
alabaster, except for some reused marble from the Caliphate period.
These rooms were surrounded by a band of epigraphic decoration with
Kufic characters that reproduced Koranic suras that alluded to the
symbolic meaning of the ornamentation. The suras corresponding to these
inscriptions have been deduced from the surviving fragments.
In
two of these calligraphic reliefs the name of Al-Muqtadir can be found,
which is why the construction of the palace has been dated, at least in
a first phase, between 1065 and 1080. One of them literally says "This
[the Aljafería] Ahmed al-Muqtadir Billah had it made."
The Golden Room had two rooms at its east and west ends that were
private bedrooms, possibly for royal use. today, the bedroom on the
western flank, which was used as a royal bedroom and was also used by
the aragonese kings until the 14th century, has been lost .
Most
of the atauriques plasterwork, which covered the walls of these rooms
with decorative panels carved in plaster, as well as an alabaster plinth
eight feet high and the white marble floors of the original palace, have
been lost . The remains that have been preserved, both in museums and
the few that are found in this royal hall, allow, however, to
reconstruct the appearance of this polychrome decoration, which, in its
day, must have been splendid.
The ceilings, wooden wainscoting,
reproduced the sky, and the entire room was an image of the cosmos, full
of symbols of the power exercised over the celestial universe by the
monarch of Zaragoza, who thus appeared as heir to the caliphs.
Access to the Golden Room is through a canvas with three openings. A
very wide central one, made up of five double marble columns with highly
stylized Islamic alabaster capitals that support four intersecting
mixtilinear arches, among which, in height, are other simpler horseshoe
arches.
To the south, there is another room of similar size that opens onto
the patio through a portico with large polylobed arches. Once again,
there is a tripartite space, and its east and west ends are extended
perpendicularly with two lateral galleries that are accessed through
wide multi-lobed arches and which end at the end of their arms in two
separate pointed arches, also multi-lobed, whose alfiz is decorated by
complex lacerations and reliefs of atauriques.
It should be noted
that this entire structure seeks an appearance of solemnity and majesty
that the shallowness of these rooms would not give to a spectator
entering the king's room. In addition, it must be taken into account
that all the plasterwork ornamentation of the palace was polychrome in
blue and red tones in the backgrounds and gold in the atauriques. Among
the filigrees is the representation of a bird, an unusual zoomorphic
figuration in Islamic art that could represent a dove, a pheasant or a
symbol of the king as a winged being.
The traces of intercrossed
mixtilinear arches are characteristic of this palace and occur for the
first time in La Aljafería, from where they will spread to future
Islamic buildings.
On the eastern side of the portico is a sacred
space, the mosque, which is accessed through a doorway inspired by
Caliphate art and which is described below.
At the eastern end of the entrance portico to the Golden Hall, there
is a small private mosque or oratory for the use of the monarch and his
courtiers. It is accessed through a doorway that ends in a horseshoe
arch inspired by the Mosque of Córdoba but with salt pans in the shape
of an S, a novelty that will imitate Almoravid and Nasrid art . This
arch is supported by two columns with very geometric leaf capitals, in
line with the Granada art of muqarna solutions. Its alfiz is profusely
ornamented with vegetal decoration and on it there is a frieze of
interlocking semicircular arches .
Once inside the oratory there
is a reduced space with a square plan but with chamfered corners, which
makes it a false octagonal plan. In the southeast sector, facing Mecca,
is the mihrab niche. The front of the mihrab is made up of a very
traditional horseshoe arch, with Cordovan shapes and alternating
voussoir threads, some decorated with vegetal reliefs and others smooth
(although they were originally decorated with pictorial decoration),
reminiscent of the mihrab thread of the Mosque of Córdoba, although what
were rich materials there (Byzantine-style mosaic tiles), in Zaragoza
-with less splendor and budget than the Caliphate Córdoba- are plaster
stuccos and polychromy typical of alarifazgoMoorish, decoration that has
been lost almost entirely in the Palace. Continuing with the arch of the
portal, an alfiz frames its extrados, in whose albanegas two gallonated
rosettes appear recessed, as is the dome inside the mihrab.
The
rest of the walls of the mosque are decorated with interlocking
mixtilinear blind arches and decorated on the entire surface with
Caliphate-inspired plant atauriques. These arches are supported by
columns topped with slender basket capitals. A plinth of square marble
slabs covers the lower part of the walls of the mosque.
All of
this is topped off in elevation with a splendid theory of criss-crossed
multi-lobed arches, which, in this case, are not completely blind, since
those on the chamfered corners now reveal the angles of the square-plan
structure. This gallery is the only one that preserves remains of
pictorial decoration from the 11th century , whose motifs were rescued
by Francisco Íñiguez Almechafter removing the whitewash with which they
were covered after the transition from the Aljafería to the chapel.
Unfortunately, this restorer, commendable for having saved the monument
from ruin, worked at a time with different criteria from today's, since
he intended to restore all the elements to their original appearance. To
do this, he repainted the traces of Islamic remains with acrylic paint,
which makes this performance irreversible and, consequently, we will
never see the original pigment, although very faded.
The dome of
the mosque was not preserved, since that is the height on which the
palace of the Catholic Monarchs was built; However, the characteristic
octagonal floor plan suggests that the solution followed exactly those
existing in the macsura of the Cordoba Mosque, that is, a dome of
semicircular arches that interlock to form an octagon in the center. The
coverage proposal by Francisco Íñiguez is, however, in this case,
reversible, since it is a removable plaster dome. In 2006, Bernabé
Cabañero Subiza, C. Lasa Gracia and JL Mateo Lázaro postulated that «the
ribs of the vault [...] must have had the section of horseshoe arches
forming an eight-pointed star scheme with a gallon dome on the top.
It is the open and landscaped space that unified the entire taifal
palace. The north and south porticos, and probably the rooms and
outbuildings located to the east and west of this central courtyard,
poured into it.
Its name comes from the birth in the Aljafería of
the Infanta Isabel de Aragón , who was Queen of Portugal in 1282. The
original pool in the south has been preserved, while the one in the
north, from the 14th century , has been covered with a wooden floor. The
restoration tried to give the patio its original splendor, and for this
purpose a flooring of marble slabs was laid out in the corridors that
surround the orange and flower garden.
The arcade that can be
seen looking towards the south portico is restored by emptying the
original arches that are deposited in the National Archaeological Museum
of Madrid and in the Museum of Zaragoza . They represent the greatest
daring and distance due to their innovation with respect to the caliphal
models of the arches on the north side.
According to Christian
Ewert, who has studied the arches of the Aljafería for fifteen years,
the more related to noble areas (Salón Dorado and Mezquita) are the
ornamentation of the arches, the more respect they have for the Cordoba
tradition from which they start.
South side ranches
Completing the tour of the 11th century palace , we come to the south
portico, which consists of an archway on its southern flank that gives
access to a portico with two lateral rooms.
This portico was the
antechamber of a large south hall that would have the same tripartite
arrangement as the one existing on the north side, and of which only the
access arcade of mixtilinear arches with geometric decoration remains.
Perhaps in this southern sector there are the greatest daring in terms
of arches, through the interweaving of lobed, mixtilinear forms, and the
inclusion of small reliefs of shafts and capitals with an exclusively
ornamental function.
The complexity of lacework, atauriques and
carvings leads to a baroque aesthetic , which constitutes a prelude to
the filigree art of the Alhambra and which are some of the most
beautiful in all Andalusian art.
After the capture of Zaragoza by Alfonso I the Battler in 1118, the
Aljafería was enabled as the palace of the kings of Aragon and as a
church, not being substantially modified until the 14th century with the
action of Pedro IV the Ceremonious .
This king enlarged the
palatial premises in 1336 and ordered the construction of the church of
San Martín in the entrance courtyard to the fortress. At this time the
use of the Aljafería is documented as the starting point of the route
that led to the Seo , where the Aragonese monarchs were solemnly crowned
and swore their privileges .
Saint Martin's Church
The church
of San Martín takes advantage of the canvases of the northwest corner of
the wall, to the point that one of its towers was used as a sacristy and
gave its name to the patio that gives access to the taifal enclosure.
The factory, in the Gothic - Mudejar style, consists of two naves
with three sections each, originally oriented to the east and supported
on two pillars with semi-columns attached to the middle of the pillar
faces, whose section is recalled in the quadrilobes that house the coat
of arms of the King of Aragon in the albanegas of the cover, which is
already from the first decade of the fifteenth century and which we will
dwell on later.
The vaults of these naves, simple ribbed, are
housed on front arches and pointed perpiaños, while the diagonals are
semicircular. At the vertices of the vaults there are rosettes with the
coats of arms of the Aragonese monarchy. Of its decoration, only
fragments of the pictorial covering and some mixtilinear branched arches
directly inspired by the Muslim palace have been preserved.
The
previously mentioned Mudejar brick doorway stands out on the outside,
built in the time of Martín I el Humano and opened in the last section
of the south nave.
This doorway is articulated by means of a very
lowered carpanel arch , sheltered by another larger pointed arch.
Framing both, a double alfiz decorated with studded motifs forming
rhombus panels.
In the albanegas there are two quadrilobed
medallions that house shields with the image of the insignia of the King
of Aragon . In the resulting tympanum between the arches there is a band
of mixed blind intersecting arches, which again refer to the series of
the Hudi palace. This strip is interrupted by a box that houses a
recently incorporated relief.
The church was remodeled in the
18th century , putting a nave before it and therefore covering the
previously described Mudejar portal. The pillars and walls were restored
and plastered in the neoclassical style. All the reform was eliminated
during the restorations of Francisco Íñiguez, although from the existing
photographic documentation, it is known that there was a slender tower
that now appears with a crenellated top, inspired by the appearance of
the Mudejar church, and in the 18th century it culminated with a curious
bulbous spire.
It is not an independent palace, but an extension of the Muslim
palace that was still in use. Pedro IV tried to provide the Aljafería
with larger rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms, since the taifal bedrooms
had become too small for the use of the Ceremonious.
These new
rooms are grouped on the northern sector of the Andalusian palace, at
different levels of height. This new Mudejar factory was extraordinarily
respectful of the pre-existing construction, both in terms of plan and
elevation, and is made up of three large rectangular rooms covered by
extraordinary wooden Mudejar aljarfes or ceilings.
Also from this
period is the western archway with pointed arches in the Patio de Santa
Isabel, lobed arch intradoses, and a small alcove with a square floor
plan and covered with an octagonal wooden dome and a curious small
entrance door with a pointed arch with circumscribed lobed intrados. in
a very fine alfiz , whose spandrel is adorned with ataurique. This door
leads to a triple loggia with semicircular arches. The alcove is located
in the building block above the mosque.
In the last years of the 15th century, the Catholic Monarchs ordered
the construction of a palace for royal use on the north wing of the
Andalusian enclosure, configuring a second floor superimposed on that of
the existing palace. The building broke the upper parts of the taifal
rooms, where the beams that would support the new palace were inserted.
The works are dated between 1488 and 1495 and Moorish master
builders continued to participate in them , such as Faraig and Mahoma de
Gali, who, as happened with Pedro IV (Yucef and Mohamat Bellito)
maintained the tradition of Mudejar master builders in the Aljafería.
The palace is accessed by going up the noble staircase, a monumental
construction made up of two wide sections with parapets of openwork
geometric plasterwork illuminated by semicircular angled windows with
fine decoration of leaves and stems with Gothic roots and Mudejar
influences, finished off in crochet on the keystone. of the arches
The ceiling, grandiose, as in the rest of the palatial rooms, is
covered with superb transversal revoltón vaults arranged between the
girders, and they are decorated with tempera paint with iconographic
motifs related to the Catholic Monarchs: the yoke and arrows alternate
with boxes of grisaille decoration of grotesques and candelieri , which
announces the typical decoration of the Renaissance .
The
staircase gives access to a corridor on the first floor that
communicates with the palatial rooms themselves. It opens onto a gallery
of torso-shaft columns that rest on footings with anthropomorphic
reliefs at their ends. To support this belvedere and the rest of the new
rooms, it was necessary to section off the upper areas of the 11th
century taifal halls and arrange five powerful octagonal pillars in
front of the north portico which, together with some pointed arches
behind them, form a new anteportico that joins the two Andalusian
perpendicular pavilions mentioned above.
The main access portal
to the throne room stands out: with a lowered trefoil arch, garnished
with a five-lobed tympanum, in the center of which the shield of the
monarchy of the Catholic Monarchs appears, in which the coats of arms of
the kingdoms of Castile appear . , León , Aragón , Sicily and Granada ,
supported by two tenant lions. The rest of the decorative field is
finished with a delicate openwork vegetal ornamentation, which reappears
in the continuous capitals of the jambs. The entire façade is made of
hardened plaster, which is the predominant visible material in the
interiors of the Aljafería, since the Mudejar artisans perpetuate the
usual materials and techniques in Islam.
In the same wall, the
entrance is escorted by two large windows with a triple mixed arch with
openwork lattices on their keystones, thanks to which the interior space
of the royal rooms is illuminated.
Once the space of the gallery
has been covered, there are several rooms that precede the great Throne
Room, which are called "rooms of the lost steps". These are three small
square rooms connected to each other by large openwork windows with
latticework that overlook the patio of San Martín, and which served as
waiting rooms for those who were to be received in audience by the
kings.
Today only two are visible, as the third was closed when
the dome of the mosque was replaced. Its roof was moved to a room next
to the throne room.
One of the most valuable elements of these
rooms are their flooring, which originally consisted of square tiles and
hexagonal colored glazed ceramic panels , forming whimsical borders.
They were made in the historic potteries of Muel (Zaragoza) at the end
of the 15th century . The preserved fragments have been used to restore
the floor in its entirety with ceramics that imitate the shape and
arrangement of the old flooring, although not its quality of glazed
reflections.
The other notable element is its sublime
Mudejar-Catholic Kings style roofs , made up of three magnificent
Aragonese Mudejar carpenters' taujeles. These ceilings present geometric
grids of wood later carved, painted and gilded with gold leaf, among
whose moldings are the well-known heraldic motifs of the Catholic
Monarchs : the yoke, the arrows and the Gordian knot together with the
classic motto "Tanto monta" (for undoing the Gordian knot , both cutting
it and untying it, according to the well-known anecdote attributed to
Alexander the Great ), as well as a good number of leaf litter finials
topped with pinecones .
More complex and difficult to describe is the magnificence and
sumptuousness of the ceiling that covers the Throne Room. Its dimensions
are very considerable (20 meters long by 8 meters wide) and its coffered
ceiling is supported by thick beams and sleepers that are decorated with
lacework that form eight-pointed stars at the intersections, while
generating thirty large and deep square coffers. .
Inside these
caissons, octagons are inscribed with a central rosette of curly leaves
that end in large hanging cones that symbolize fertility and
immortality. This ceiling was reflected in the floor, which reproduces
the thirty squares with their respective inscribed octagons.
At the beginning of 1486, the area of the Patio de San Martín was
used as the headquarters of the Court of the Holy Office of the
Inquisition and rooms adjacent to the patio were set up to house the
officials of this body. It is probable that this is the origin of the
use as a prison of the Torre del Trovador.
The new function
(which would last until the early years of the 18th century ) triggered
an event that would culminate in a reform project undertaken under the
mandate of Felipe II for which it would henceforth become a military
base. In 1591, in the events known as Alteraciones de Zaragoza , the
persecuted secretary of King Felipe II, Antonio Pérez accepted the
Privilege of Demonstration contemplated by the jurisdiction of Aragonin
order to elude the imperial troops. However, the Court of the
Inquisition had jurisdiction over all the jurisdictions of the kingdoms,
and, for this reason, he was imprisoned in the dungeons of the
inquisitorial headquarters of the Aljafería, which provoked an uprising
of the people in the face of what they considered a violation of the
regional law, and went to the attack on the Aljafería to rescue him.
After the forceful action of the royal army, the revolt was put down,
and Felipe II decided to consolidate the Aljafería as a fortified
citadel under his authority to prevent similar revolts.
The
design of the work, which consisted of a "modern" military building, was
entrusted to the Sienese military engineer , Tiburzio Spannocchi. He
built a set of rooms attached to the south and east walls that hid the
ultra-semicircular towers inside, although on the east façade he did not
affect those that flanked the entrance door and beyond. Surrounding the
entire building, a crenellated wall was erected that left a space for a
walkway inside and that finished off at its four corners in four
pentagonal bastions, the beginnings of which can be seen today. The
entire complex was surrounded by a twenty-meter-wide ditch, reexcavated
in 1982 at the initiative of the architect Ángel Peropadre Muniesa,
which was saved by two drawbridges on the eastern and northern flanks.
The appearance of this new plant is reflected in the plan of the
Aljafería as we know it after the last restoration completed in 1998.
The Aljafería de Spannocchi remained without substantial changes
until 1705, when, due to the War of the Spanish Succession, it was the
lodging for two companies of French troops, which led to a regrowth of
the parapets of the lower wall of the moat carried out by the military
engineer Dezveheforz. [ who? ]
But the decisive transformation as
a quartering occurred in 1772 at the initiative of Carlos III , in which
all the facades were remodeled in the way the western one is currently
presented, and who converted the interior spaces into rooms for the
soldiers and officers who were staying in the building. In the western
third of the palace, a large parade ground was set up into which the
rooms of the different companies spill, made with simplicity and
functionality, following the rationalist spirit of the second half of
the 18th century and the practical purpose for which the built areas
were used. so. Only the addition in 1862 of four neo-Gothic towers
remained pending, of which those located in the northwestern and
southwestern corner have come down to our days.
It was precisely
in the middle of the 19th century when Mariano Nougués Secall raised the
alarm about the deterioration of the Andalusian and Mudejar remains of
the palace in his 1845 report entitled Description and history of the
Aljafería castle , a rigorous study in which urged to preserve this
valuable historical-artistic complex. Even Queen Elizabeth II provided
funds for the restoration, and a commission was set up in 1848 to
undertake it; but in 1862 the Aljafería passed from the property of the
Royal Heritage to the Ministry of War, which aborted its restoration and
aggravated the damage produced.
The deterioration continued until
in 1947 the architect Francisco Íñiguez Almech undertook, practically
alone, the task of its integral restoration, in which he was occupied
until his death in 1982.
In the 1960s it was used as a military
barracks, and the decoration was covered in plaster.
In the 1960s
it was used as a military barracks, and the decoration was covered in
plaster.
In 1984, the parliamentary commission created to find a
definitive seat for the Cortes of Aragon recommended locating the
regional parliament in the Aljafería palace and the Zaragoza City
Council (owner of the building) agreed to cede part of the complex free
of charge for a period of 99 years. In this way, the restoration
operations gained new impetus with the actions of Ángel Peropadre, Juan
Antonio Souto (in archaeological work), and, from 1985, Luis Franco
Lahoz and Mariano Pemán Gavín, who carried out the final restoration
project of the Aljafería for the location in it of the headquarters of
the Courts of Aragon. Once the works were finished, the Aljafería was
inaugurated as a historical-artistic monument in 1998 by Prince Felipe
de Borbón .