Visit Granada

The figure that misleads is the Alhambra one, because “the Alhambra” is three different places: it is 290 m to the Puerta de las Granadas, where the climb starts, 540 m to the Puerta de la Justicia, and 1,080 m to the entrance pavilion, which is where you go in once you have your ticket. The 290 m is true and it is the figure we usually give, but it measures to the foot of the climb: anyone planning their time slot around it arrives late. Everything else really is where it looks: the cathedral at 290 m and on the flat, the Capilla Real at 190 m. The breakdown from each of our 5 addresses is on the tourist apartments in Granada page.

Not to the door, no. The old town is a Restricted Access Zone — 136 hectares taking in Realejo, Albayzín, Sacromonte and Centro — and the entry route the city council itself publishes for our apartments ends about 15 metres from the front door, around Plaza Nueva. In other words the route does get there, and what you need to sort out before travelling is not a walk but the permit. Worth knowing before you plan your arrival, not on arrival.

Getting that far, you can. We appear on the official list of accommodation with a number-plate notification agreement with the Centro de Gestión Integral de Movilidad, and the municipal rule is explicit: “a tourist is treated as a resident at the same place where their hotel is located”. The condition is about timing, not paperwork: there is a retractable bollard on the route, and where there is a bollard the number plate has to be notified before you drive, not on arrival. Write to us from the contact page with the number plate and the dates as soon as you book.

The Low Emission Zone (ZBE) is a different thing, and almost everybody mixes the two up: enforceable since 1 October 2025 and active 24 hours a day, it only bars vehicles that do not have a tax address in Granada and on top of that carry no environmental sticker. With a B, C, ECO or Zero sticker you get in, wherever the owner lives, so it does not affect most of our guests. They are worth keeping apart: notifying the number plate settles the Restricted Access Zone, and tourist accommodation is not among the exemptions the ZBE publishes. They are two different regimes.

What the agreement never covers is the bus lane. The council website says so without qualification — “bus lanes may not be used (whether by residents or by tourists staying in authorised hotel establishments)” — and its cameras issue penalty notices from 7:30 to 22:00 every day.

The detail — the control points one by one, which are bollards and which are cameras, where you can leave the car and what to do if a penalty notice arrives — is in Driving to Granada city centre and in Where to park in Granada.

If you are coming to see the monuments, inside the old town. Not out of romanticism but out of arithmetic: in a city whose centre is a restricted access zone, everything in the table above is done on foot from here.

And now the part almost nobody writes down. If you are travelling with someone for whom stairs and cobbles are a serious problem, or if your plan revolves around something outside the old town, this area will give you more trouble than it is worth. Tell us on WhatsApp, by phone or by email and we will say so plainly before you book.

To compare capacity, size, parking and address across the 10 apartments at a glance, the table is in the guide to tourist apartments in Granada. If what matters to you is the exact distance from each front door to each monument, the breakdown is in apartments in Granada city centre. And if you would rather see them in photos, the full collection is in the apartment listing.

And if what you want is to understand the neighbourhoods before the apartments — noise, hills, suitcases and which area suits whom — start with Granada neighbourhoods and with Where to stay in Granada.

Tapas in the centre are concentrated along two streets that appear in the table above with their exact distance: Calle Navas, the tapas street par excellence, and Calle Elvira, which starts beside Plaza Nueva. Both are long streets and the distance we give is to their middle stretch, so the near end of each is closer than that.

The price of that convenience is noise, and we write it down because it is better to know before you book than after: sleeping next to where people go out means hearing the people who go out. If quiet at night is non-negotiable for you, ask us about the specific apartment, because they do not all face the same street.

Where to eat and how the free tapa works, in Tapas in Granada.

And if what you are after is what people eat here rather than where, the dishes of the city — which ones are really from Granada, which are seasonal and which one you can take home — are in typical food in Granada.

For the night — which area is which, how late people stay out and, above all, what you hear from where — there is where to go out at night in Granada.

First you settle the Alhambra and then you organise the rest of the trip around that time. Your ticket sets that time, not you, whereas everything else allows improvisation: reversing that order is the classic mistake.

The rest of the old town is seen on foot. The cathedral is 290 m away and the Capilla Real 190 m, both on the flat. You reach the Paseo de los Tristes by following the Carrera del Darro, which is also a pedestrian street by municipal decree and camera-controlled 24 hours a day: you walk it without cars. And the San Nicolás viewpoint, even though it is 630 m in a straight line, is reached up steep, stepped alleys; the number does not account for that part.

What there is to see in each place, how much of a climb it really is and what is worth booking ahead, in Granada's Albaicín and in Mirador de San Nicolás.

First, settle the Alhambra, because there is a catch: admission for children under 12 is free, but the Patronato adds a condition that a lot of people miss — “it must be purchased at the same time as the rest”. Free does not mean you can turn up without it. If you book four adult tickets and arrive with two children, the problem is at the gate, not on the website.

Second, accept the terrain, which is what decides how the day goes. The Alhambra entrance pavilion is 1,080 m uphill from our front doors: with small children that is not a stroll, it is an expedition. And the San Nicolás viewpoint is reached up stepped alleys, which with a pushchair is not a plan but a workout. What does work is the Carrera del Darro to the Paseo de los Tristes: it is flat, along the river, and it is a pedestrian street camera-controlled 24 hours a day, so you walk it without keeping an eye out for cars.

And in the apartment itself, with children what changes the trip is not the location but the layout. Laurel is the only one whose listing states 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, and its building has a lift. Suite Comares and Colcha Suite have two bedrooms. And Colcha Penthouse is the roomiest, 105 m² for 6 guests, but it is a duplex: with a baby in the house, that means stairs inside the apartment on top of the ones in the street.

The exact order of the day — what time suits the Alhambra, where you stop for a rest and what you leave until last — is in Granada in 2 and 3 days, which is where the climb fits into a realistic plan.

What this page does not cover — whether your particular car can get to Plaza Nueva, whether an apartment has the bed layout you need — we answer ourselves, not a call centre: write to us. And if you spot that something here has stopped being true — a council timetable, a price, a street that has changed regime — tell us: we would rather correct it than have someone plan their trip on an old fact of ours.