Sierra Nevada peaks behind Granada
— the wall the city wears behind its back.
Not only on a wall.
Sierra Nevada peaks behind Granada, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“From the Alhambra terraces the city falls away and the range rises straight up: Mulhacén and Pico Veleta, the two highest summits on mainland Spain. Snow holds on the upper slopes into late spring, and on clear winter evenings the peaks turn rose at sunset above the warm roofs of the Albaicín.
The place, in three passes.
The Sierra Nevada rises immediately south and east of Granada, with Mulhacén at 3,479 metres and Pico Veleta at 3,396 metres the two highest summits on the Iberian mainland. The range runs roughly 80 kilometres along an east-west axis and falls steeply toward the Vega de Granada. Views from the Alhambra, the Mirador de San Nicolás in the Albaicín, and the Sacromonte hillside all take in the same wall of peaks. The range carries the southernmost permanent snow in Europe outside the Alps.
Granada sits at about 740 metres and the peaks rise nearly three kilometres above the Vega in twenty horizontal kilometres. That vertical compression sets up an evening light that locals call arrebol, a rose-and-amber alpenglow on the snow that lasts about ten minutes after the sun has dropped behind the western hills. The effect is sharpest from late November through March, when the upper range carries snow and the air over the Vega is cool and dry. The Mirador de San Nicolás holds the canonical alignment.
The classic viewpoints are free and open at any hour. Mirador de San Nicolás in the Albaicín gives the best alignment of Alhambra and peaks; sunset crowds gather an hour ahead. The Alhambra itself requires a timed ticket booked well in advance. Drivers can reach the ski station at Pradollano in about 45 minutes from the city, and the upper trails to Veleta open from late June through early October. The range is protected as Sierra Nevada National Park.
