Gothic Palace and Patio del Crucero
Alfonso X built it after the Christian conquest over the Almohad palace: it is made up of the Tapestry Hall, the Garden Hall, the Hall of Feasts and the Chapel.
The Gothic Palace
It was roofed with ribbed vaults resting on pillars and, on the outside, had buttresses shaped like crenellated towers, with larger towers at the four corners containing spiral staircases. Renaissance features such as the 16th-century tiled dados pay homage to the emperors.
In the Tapestry Hall, the first after the main door, hang tapestries from a series of twelve depicting the conquest of Tunis in 1535 by the Emperor Charles V. The emperor took the painter Juan Vermay with him to record every moment; when the campaign was over, he presented the drawings to his sister Mary of Hungary, who decided to have them turned into twelve tapestries woven by Willem de Pannemaker, the finest weaver of the time. Today they form one of the best collections in the world.
The Patio del Crucero
The complex is built over the original core of the Alcázar, the 10th-century Dar al-Imara. The Almohads reused its remains to build a new palace and, when the Christian troops took the city, Alfonso X rebuilt it and turned it into the Gothic Palace.
Over the years it was transformed in different ways, but it keeps its original form: two levels, the upper one resting on the lower one by means of vaults, where there was a pool surrounded by plants, the so-called Baths of Doña María de Padilla. The name comes from the great influence Doña María had over King Peter I.
