Arco de las Pesas and Plaza Larga

You are at the top of the Albaicín, the quarter where medieval Granada was born. In the eleventh century the Zirid kings had their residence here, the Alcazaba Cadima, and this arch was one of the gates in its wall.

1A gate built for defence

Notice that, as you walk in, you cannot see the other side: the passage turns at a right angle. This is a bent entrance, a defensive design that forced any attacker to slow down and become exposed. The historian Luis Seco de Lucena identified it with the Bab al-Ziyada, the ‘gate of the extension’, because it linked the old citadel with a new suburb growing to the north: the space now taken up by Plaza Larga. That is why it is also known as the Puerta Nueva, the New Gate.

2The Morisco quarter

After 1492 the Albaicín remained a Muslim neighbourhood. In 1499 a revolt broke out here against Cardinal Cisneros’s policy of conversions, and shortly afterwards Granada’s Muslims were forced to be baptised: from then on they were called Moriscos. For decades they kept their language, dress and customs, until pressure from Philip II sparked the Alpujarras rebellion at Christmas 1568. A group of rebels slipped into the Albaicín by night to bring it into the uprising, without success. When the war ended, the Crown deported the Moriscos of the kingdom of Granada to other parts of Castile, and the quarter emptied.

According to tradition, the arch owes its name to the false weights confiscated from dishonest traders and hung here as a warning.

3What to look for

• The bend in the inner passage, typical of Andalusi military architecture.
• The horseshoe arch with its stone voussoirs.
• Plaza Larga, the old suburb, which still keeps its neighbourhood life.