Peter Harvey has discovered two spacious rooms, lightly high in the Alhambra.
“Room of the beds” is the literal translation of “Sala de las camas,” which must lead not a few visitors to giggle and wonder what the difference is between a “room of the beds” and a bedroom. Traditional use in English for such spaces, often assumed by orientalists with imperialist agendas, pace Edward Said, to be regal knocking-shops, favours the evocative “chamber of repose,” although you’d still have to drop “real,” royal, in this layout.
How did the hall acquire its name? I don’t think Washington Irving bothered about it, although he rather liked the view of the Vega from the tower-top. But a brief trawl fails to discover it in pre-mid-19th century Spanish. So were its name and function in fact dreamed up by an English-speaking tourist or a French army captain, translated poorly into Spanish once they realised there was money to be made and then back again? Is all human communication in fact an out-of-hand game of Chinese whispers? Etc etc.
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