Next autumn, Casa de Zafra and Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo will host two new exhibitions focused on architecture in al-Andalus and on the figure of Washington Irving respectively.
The Councillor for Tourism, Manuel Olivares, highlights the commitment of the team of government to “restore the splendour of great monuments of the city with a quality cultural programming”.
Granada City Council consolidates Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo and Casa de Zafra as great cultural spaces in the city through a new exhibition programming in collaboration with El legado andalusí. Next autumn we will have the opportunity to enjoy two new “high-quality” exhibitions focused on Architecture of al-Andalus and on the figure of the distinguished and indefatigable traveller Washington Irving. The new programming arises from the ·alliance” reached by Granada City Council through Albayzín Agency, and El legado andalusí, which was reflected in a collaboration agreement. Today, a new addendum aimed at highlighting the importance of these great monuments of the city, has been signed within the frame of this agreement by the Councillor for Tourism and Vice President of the City Council, Manuel Olivares and the Director of El legado andalusí, Concha de Santa Ana.
The agreement, as Manuel Olivares has highlighted, is part of the “determined” commitment assumed by the team of government to “restore splendour to wonderful places in Granada” that, according to him, “unfortunately, have been underrated so far”. To date, as Olivares has recalled, the alliance between the two entities, under which two exhibitions have already been held, have rendered “highly positive figures, as visits have increased in both spaces”.
Thus, the Director of El Legado Andalusí has reported that the exhibition that was organized in Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo under the title The Moriscos in the Kingdom of Granada, which offered a retrospective on this minority’s legacy to our culture, accounted for a total of 30,255 visitors. Likewise, the results obtained in the exhibition El legado andalusí, a plastic proposal, that since last 14th November hosted Casa de Zafra, have been described as “successful”, since, as she has pointed out, has been visited by 13,314 people.
For Manuel Olivares, “these data reflect we are on the right path”, and has insisted on the “the need, having into account the current moment we are living through, to focus all our efforts on advancing in this anomalous situation”. For this reason, he has considered “vital” to bet on “turning these great monuments into high quality cultural attractions”.
The new programming will start at Casa de Zafra on September 10th with the exhibition Washington Irving. An epic journey, from 1828 to 1829 , that will pay a tribute to the American lawyer, essayist, biographer and diplomat Washington Irving in the form of engravings, photographs, old stereoscopies and a selection of the first editions of his work. Irving arrived in Granada in 1824 and his fascination for the wealth and exoticism of the al-Andalus history of Granada resulted in his world-renowned book Tales of the Alhambra.
Through this exhibition, the city will pay a tribute to a figure who contributed to the rediscovery of al-Andalus and rendered a new international projection of that period in the 19th century. It can be visited until January 15th, 2021. Meanwhile, Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo, will host the exhibition Architecture of al-Andalus. Spaces and visions, from September 24th to January 30th. It will propose a retrospective of “the entire architectural legacy of al-Andalus that is still preserved in the Iberian Peninsula through photographs of emblematic places and scale models of unique buildings”. The Councillor for Tourism has invited citizens to come to know this “exceptional” cultural proposal, through which, as he has suggested, “we can offer the respect our legacy deserves, as it is only in this way that we can get to know our roots and history and preserve them in the future”.
Listen to the interview to Concha de Santa Ana
