Alcázar de Jerez de la Frontera

The alcázar's hill is the highest point of the old town, and excavations in 2009 found hut floors and traces of silos, apparently of a Chalcolithic settlement some 5,000 years old. In the mid-11th century Jerez swore allegiance to the Banu Jizrun of the taifa of Arcos, and the earliest architecture found on the site belongs to that moment — a few foundations of stone bound with mud.

In the 12th century Jerez broke with Almoravid authority and declared itself an independent taifa under Abul Gamar ibn Garrun, king of Ronda; from 1146 it swore fidelity to the Almohads, then taking control of al-Andalus. Most of the Islamic fabric in the complex belongs to the period that followed, which ran until 1248. Built as fortress and palace together, the seat of the power that governed the city, it is counted among the few structures that best exemplify Almohad architecture in Iberia.

Behind a double line of walls, the inner set with towers of which seven survive, was in effect an autonomous fortified city within the larger one — commonplace in Almohad practice — holding living quarters, baths, mosques, warehouses and water tanks. The mosque inside the walls is the only survivor of the eighteen the city once had.

Jerez declared itself a vassal of Castile under Ferdinand III in 1248, but the alcázar stayed in the hands of its Muslim governor Ibn Abit — Aben Obeit in the Christian sources — until a Castilian siege took it, dated 1255 by some accounts, 1261 by others. Command passed to Nuño González de Lara el Bueno, who left Garci Gómez Carrillo as his lieutenant. Alfonso X turned the mosque into a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary; its minaret, still standing, became the bell tower.

In 1264, as revolts broke out in Murcia and other Andalusian towns, the Muslims of Jerez rose, got inside the alcázar and put the Christian garrison to the sword. The Libro del Alcázar has them entering by a mine or tunnel dug into the enclosure; another tradition has them crossing from a wall onto the alcázar's own walls. Alfonso X's Cantigas de Santa María record the rising and the burning of the chapel of Santa María, the former mosque. Jerez remembered its Alférez Mayor, Don Fortun de Torres, as holding the royal banner up through the fight without surrendering the alcázar, mutilated until his death.

Alfonso X besieged the city for five months that year. Jerez surrendered, and its Muslim inhabitants were expelled, taking refuge in nearby towns or crossing to Africa.

The alcázar became crown property, held for the king by lieutenants. Even so, when Henry IV came to Jerez in 1464 the residence there was in such condition that he had to be lodged in a private house. From 1470 the Marquis of Cádiz repaired buildings and walls, cut a new ditch and raised a tower at the western angle, so that the Catholic Monarchs could lodge in the alcázar in 1478.

Through the 16th and 17th centuries the place fell back into ruin, a decline set out in a report of 1588. From 1664, over the remains of the Islamic residence, the baroque palace that still stands was raised, generally credited to Lorenzo Fernández de Villavicencio. With the palace and its resident owners came feasts and cultural events, and a coliseum where plays and operas were staged; in the 18th century that theatre set Fernández de Villavicencio against the preacher Diego José de Cádiz in a fierce public quarrel.

Salvador Díez Pérez de Muñoz (1858–1939), a Jerez wine producer who had bought and restored the cloisters of Santo Domingo in 1908, learned of the town council's plan to pull the complex down as ruinous and lay a public park over the site, and bought the alcázar himself in 1926; his family is credited with saving the building. In 1931 it was declared a Monument, published that year in the Gaceta de Madrid, and has held Bien de Interés Cultural status since.

During the Spanish Civil War and the years after it, the alcázar was a centre of Francoist repression and execution. The 1931 declaration did not prevent its use as a military barracks under Franco, nor the later start of a hotel inside the walls, whose structure was demolished in 1981. Work done on the mosque in the same years to glorify Alfonso X is judged to have been of little historical rigour.

The alcázar is open to visitors all year, hosts concerts and theatre, and is part of the Conjunto Monumental del Alcázar y Cámara Oscura. It drew more than 50,000 visitors in 2012. Some specialists hold that overuse damages the monument.