Alcazaba y Murallas del Cerro de San Cristóbal

Almería received the rank of medina, or city, in 955 from Abd ar-Rahman III, the first caliph of al-Andalus, who ordered a defensive citadel built in the upper sector of the town over the remains of an earlier fortress. Walled and towered, and provided with its own squares, houses and mosque, the Alcazaba was built to be the seat of local government, commanding the city and the sea; it was raised to protect Bayana, then the area's largest city and known today as Pechina.

The complex was enlarged under Al-Mansur, and again under Khayran as-Saqlabi, the first king of the independent taifa of Almería, who ruled between 1012 and 1028.

Through the Granada war of 1482-1492 the captain-general Andrés de Guardiola spent long stretches riding the Granadan frontier, watching for a Muslim invasion and for any weakness on the border worth attacking. Around 1487 he defeated and captured the Moorish commander Malique Alabez, Nasrid alcaide of Almería's Alcazaba, and carried him off to the fortress of Jumilla. Almería's capitulation, and its passing to Castilian sovereignty, came on 26 December 1489.

The Alcazaba's first enclosure, a wide expanse, corresponded to the original Muslim military camp and to the refuge for the population in case of siege, for which it was provided with large cisterns. Around 1522 an earthquake destroyed much of the city and left this precinct gravely damaged. The second enclosure held the governors' residence, their soldiers and servants, along with a mosque, baths, tanks and tents; it is divided from the first by the Muro de la Vela, the Wall of the Sail, built at the order of King Charles III and named for a bell that warned of ships entering the bay, of fire and of other dangers.

The third and most modern enclosure was added after the Christian conquest: Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon had a castle built in the most elevated sector of the town, better able to resist the new gunpowder artillery.

The Alcazaba's last fortification project came in 1836, during the First Carlist War, out of fear the conflict would spread to the region; once it ended, the building fell into disuse and abandonment. A royal decree of 26 May 1855, issued under the Madoz disentailment, permitted demolition of both the city wall and the Alcazaba, since Almería had ceased to be a fortified town and its defences, no longer of strategic importance, now obstructed the street plan. Most of the wall was destroyed, but the Alcazaba survived: no bidder came forward willing to invest in the building materials that could have been extracted, and the Ministry of War would not approve building at that height.

By around 1890 the complex stood in partial ruin, in the judgement of the municipal architect Trinidad Cuartara, and a stretch of wall and of the powder tower came away, killing a man and injuring a local woman. At the end of that year a series of loopholes and the coping of the nearest stretch of wall were pulled down. Interest in conserving and investigating the site began to surface four years later, and in 1908 a radio transmitting antenna made by Telefunken was installed, lasting until 1939 and communicating with the Victoria Grande fort at Melilla.

Leopoldo Torres Balbás laid the groundwork for the site's historical study in the 1930s, work cut short by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, through which the complex passed with scarcely any damage. Restoration began in 1940, and a year later Francisco Prieto-Moreno, once the Alhambra's conservator, took charge of the first works; he did not leave the post until 1970, and in that time laid out the gardens of the first enclosure and the Casa del Alcaide, along with ground consolidation, excavation and new accesses.

Archaeological campaigns followed: an excavation of the palace quarter in 1951-1954 under F. Ochotorena, the first conducted systematically; clearance, documentation and cataloguing in 1986-1987 under Lorenzo Cara; work in 1989 on the palace's service area and public baths; and a fifth restoration phase in 1993-1995, directed by the architect Ramón de Torres, focused on the northern wall, the water system and the approaches to the first enclosure.