There was a mystery about it, and it had never been opened
within the memory of the oldest inhabitant.
He conducted me to the spot. The gateway is in the centre of what
was once an immense pile, called the Tower of the Seven Floors (la
Torre de los Siete Suelos). It is famous in the neighborhood as the
scene of strange apparitions and Moorish enchantments. According to
Swinburne the traveller, it was originally the great gate of entrance.
The antiquaries of Granada pronounce it the entrance to that quarter
of the royal residence where the king's bodyguards were stationed.
It therefore might well form an immediate entrance and exit to the
palace; while the grand Gate of Justice served as the entrance of
state to the fortress. When Boabdil sallied by this gate to descend to
the Vega, where he was to surrender the keys of the city to the
Spanish sovereigns, he left his vizier Aben Comixa to receive, at
the Gate of Justice, the detachment from the Christian army and the
officers to whom the fortress was to be given up.*
* The minor details of the surrender of Granada have been stated
in different ways even by eye-witnesses. The author, in his revised
edition of the Conquest, has endeavored to adjust them according to
the latest and apparently best authorities.
The once redoubtable Tower of the Seven Floors is now a mere
wreck, having been blown up with gunpowder by the French, when they
abandoned the fortress.
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