page_title: Aljafería
section_title: Golden Hall
hierarchical_section_title: Aljafería / Moorish Taifal palace / Golden Hall
caption_attribution_description: Español: Intradós del arco de la puerta de la alcoba oriental del Salón Dorado de la Aljafería de Zaragoza. Siglo XI.
context_page_description: The Aljafería Palace is a fortified medieval palace built during the second half of the 11th century in the Taifa of Zaragoza in Al-Andalus, present day Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain. It was the residence of the Banu Hud dynasty during the era of Abu Jaffar Al-Muqtadir. The palace reflects the splendour attained by the Taifa of Zaragoza at the height of its grandeur. It currently contains the Cortes of the autonomous community of Aragon.
  The structure holds unique importance in that it is the only conserved testimony of a large building of Spanish Islamic architecture of the era of the Taifas. The Aljaferia, along with the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba and the Alhambra are three of the best examples of Hispano-Muslim architecture. In 2001, the original restored structures of the Aljafería were included in the Mudéjar Architecture of Aragon, a World Heritage Site.
  The solutions adopted in the ornamentation of the Aljafería, such as the use of mixtilinear arcs and springers, the extension of arabesque in large area, and the schematisation and progressive abstraction of the yeserias of a vegetal nature, decisively influenced Almoravid and Almohad art in the Iberian Peninsula.
context_section_description: The Golden Hall had at its ends east and west two rooms that were private bedrooms possibly of royal use. Today the bedroom of the western flank has been lost, which was used as a royal bedroom and also used the Aragonese kings until the 14th century.
  Most of the yeserias of arabesques, which carpeted the walls of these stays with decorative panels plastered with plaster, as well as an alabaster base of two and a half meters high and the white marble floors of the original palace, have been lost. The remains that have been preserved, both in museums and the few that are in this royal hall, nevertheless allow to reconstruct the appearance of this polychrome decoration, which, in its day, should have been splendid.
  Ceilings, wood carvings, reproduced the sky, and the whole room was an image of the cosmos, clothed with symbols of the power exercised over the celestial universe by the monarch of Saragossa, who thus appeared as heir to the caliphs.
  The access to the Golden Hall is made through a canvas with three vanes. A very large central one, consisting of five double marble columns with very stylized Islamic alabaster capitals that support four mixtilinear arches, among which, in height, there are other simpler horseshoe.
caption: View of the roof of the Golden Hall from the door of the eastern bedroom. We can see the intrados of the bow decorated with yeserias.
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