The story of this place
Built in the second half of the 11th century for al-Muqtadir, the poet-king of the Muslim taifa of Zaragoza, the Aljafería is the finest surviving Islamic palace of Spain's northern frontier, its 'Golden Hall' and intertwined arches rivalling those of Córdoba. After the Christian conquest of 1118 it became a royal residence of the kings of Aragon, who added a Gothic throne room where Ferdinand and Isabella received homage. In the 15th and 16th centuries the Spanish Inquisition used part of it as a court and prison; later it was a barracks battered in the Napoleonic sieges of Zaragoza. Verdi's opera 'Il Trovatore' opens in one of its towers. Today it houses the Aragonese parliament.