Royal Chancellery of Granada

This guide to the Royal Chancellery of Granada opens with a blunt question: would you have dared tear down a fifty-year-old facade just because you thought it wasn't grand enough? That's what Fernando Nino de Guevara did on arriving in 1584 to run southern Spain's highest court, a tribunal Queen Isabel had planted here in 1505 as a message about who now ruled a recently conquered city. Look up at the doorway, where carved figures of Justice and Fortitude flank the royal coat of arms.