Isabel the Catholic Square
Bronze monument of a queen and a kneeling navigator, cast for a voyage's four-hundredth anniversary and left unsigned by its own sculptor.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Isabel the Catholic Square in Granada opens with a puzzle carved in bronze: nowhere on this monument to the queen and Columbus does its sculptor, Mariano Benlliure, put his name. It traces back to eighteen ninety-two, when Granada spent months preparing to host Spain's celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's voyage, building triumphal arches and inviting the royal family, only for the regent and the prime minister's government to attend rival ceremonies elsewhere. Furious crowds took to the streets, and by some accounts burned the very arches raised to welcome guests who never came.
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