I visited in June 2025. My experience of the Alhambra was certainly unique...! There are some important things to note when visiting:

• As people have mentioned, book your Alhambra tickets well in advance. It's Spain's second most visited tourist attraction outside of the Sagrada Familia, so it's incredibly popular year-round.
• Bring your identification! We literally watched a woman weeping as she and her husband were turned away at the entrance, which is pretty removed from the rest of the city, because they had their tickets but did not bring their passports. They were staying in an Airbnb so there was no easy way to go back and get their ID without completely missing their timeslot. This leads to the next point...
• Arrive early! When you arrive and get your tickets (if you didn't receive a digital QR code) or scan your existing tickets, you will think you have "entered" the Alhambra but you actually haven't. Confusingly, there is another 15-minute walk you have to take across the complex where you scan your tickets again and only then are you considered "inside" the grounds for your ticket time. You will then be required to re-scan your tickets and passports many times throughout the duration of the tour through the grounds, for some reason.

At the area with ticket booth, there are official guides available that will give tours to your group for 30€/person. (Which they claim is cheaper than online.) I really wanted a tour guide, but the four family members in my group did not and the guides will not allow only "partial" groups to take the tour. I tried asking if I could do it on my own or just pay to join some other group's tour, but the guide organizer was very firm that you either have to take everyone in your ticket group or no one.

Do not make the mistake of visiting the Alhambra without a guide! Because of the situation I just described above, our group went in without a guide, only to find inside that there were no signs available whatsoever for explaining things, nor was there any auido guide available. It is commonly said you can spend a whole day or more at the Alhambra (just read the other reviews here), but for our group without a guide we made it through the entire thing in two hours and I was honestly bored out of my mind. Without any explanation or context to what you are looking at, the entire set of palaces just look like a bunch of white walls and elaborate ceilings, very similar to those in other parts of Spain like the Aljafería in Zaragoza, or the Real Alcázar in Sevilla. (Both of which I enjoyed, but now made this feel completely repetitive without someone to explain to me why it was unique.) If I was giving my rating of this WHS on the Alhambra alone, and basing it only on my personal experience, this would have been two or three stars.

Granada gets 4 stars because I enjoyed my experience there as a whole, it really is a great example of Al-Andalus and the Arab-European mixture that defined that area. The House of Zafra teaches you about the Albaicín neighborhood and explains to you why it is a WHS. (Worth it for the aficionados.) The Albaicín itself will also truly feel like you have been transported to Fez or some other Moroccan city, albeit less crowded and with less chaos because you're dealing with Spaniards selling from established businesses at fixed prices, not haggling with tiny individual Moroccan vendors. The cave museums in Sacromonte, the Capilla Real, and the Palacio de los Olvidados (Inquisition musem) are all worth visiting.