The Horse Chestnuts of the Alhambra Forest

The wooded hillside visitors climb to reach the Alhambra did not exist when the fortress was still in Muslim hands. Under the Nazarid rulers this slope was a cemetery, reportedly the burial ground of Muhammad I, the dynasty's founder, and his descendants, and the forest only began taking shape after Charles V arrived in the 16th century, later filled out under Ferdinand VII in the early 19th century with species including horse chestnut, plane, acacia and hackberry. The chestnuts have adapted well enough to compete for light against the forest's taller species that some individuals reach 20 metres, and each spring, generally late April into May, they put on the display that has made them the Bosque's best-known trees, dense white flower spikes covering the crown for a few weeks before giving way to spiny, inedible fruit that only superficially resembles a true chestnut. Unlike the paid monuments the forest surrounds, this walk itself, entered through the monumental Puerta de las Granadas, costs nothing and requires no ticket.