Fifteen Moore students enjoyed 12 days in Granada, Spain, as part of their Cultural Immersion class, taught by Dr. Kelly Kirby, Liberal Arts department chair, who traveled with the students.
From January 4 through January 18, the group from Moore toured Granada, a southern city in the Andalusia region, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Courtney Warren, a junior Curatorial Studies student, documented the trip. This is her second dispatch in a series.
By Courtney Warren
On the third day of our time in Granada, we took a tour around the older parts of the city. We started on the boulevard, which is a testament to the legacy of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain after they finally got hold of Granada, the last stronghold of Muslim dynasty in Spain. It was a wide, flat space where some men were out early to sell shoes and bags. Rising from the street where the Three Wise Men parade had passed through two nights before were imposing, solid government buildings. It wasn’t unlike the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, where faux classical facades show power and strength.
This contrasted from the next area we visited. We wound our way through narrow shaded streets, up steep long steps, in directions where it seemed like we had just come from. This was the Arab Quarter, the Albaycin, standing in its whitewashed glory since before 1492 AD. Making it to the top, we looked over to another peak and saw the Alhambra palace watching over us.
I couldn’t really tell you how to get back to where I was before, which was fine, because our guide took us back down through the twisted and tight streets, through what he called the narrowest street in Granada, and to the Jewish Quarter. The streets were wide enough to get people moving through and the buildings were all houses with small shops sprinkled around.
On Day 4, Drashti Pandya, a senior Fashion Design major, initiated a spontaneous trip for the group to the resort town of Nerja. What was dazzling about the sunny, bright beach town were the beautiful colors of the buildings. It felt like being in a plein-air painting. While it was beautiful and there were remnants of other times, the city on the Costa del Sol was a beach town through and through, with food to satisfy sun-soaked people just looking for anything to eat at the end of a sandy day. The shopping and generalized tourist food and shops took me back to summers spent on the Jersey shore, reminding me that I was never too far from home.
These two days really fleshed out a concept driven home in my art history classes: form and function are intricately tied together. The tight streets of the Arab Quarter were meant to confuse and spit up intruders, the boulevard was processional and grand to exert the new ruler’s power, and beach towns will always be the same no matter where you go, because they're meant to soak up the sun and the attention of visitors.
