Granada’s Alhambra
For me, one of the great joys of travel is meeting great art and architecture in person – which I’ve collected in a book. Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here is one of my favorites:
Nowhere does the splendor of Moorish civilization shine so beautifully as in the Alhambra – Europe’s last and greatest Moorish palace.
For seven centuries (711-1492), most of Spain was Muslim, ruled by Islamic Moors from North Africa. While the rest of Europe was going through the Dark Ages, Spain flourished under Moorish rule. Its culmination was the Alhambra—a sprawling complex of palaces and gardens atop a hill in Granada. And the highlight is the magnificent Palacios Nazaríes, where sultans and their families lived, worked and held court.
You enter a world of rooms adorned with a fragrant court of myrtles, stucco “stalactites,” flaked windows, and bubbling fountains. Water – so rare and precious in the Islamic world – was the purest symbol of life. The Alhambra is decorated with water, water everywhere: standing still, cascading, masking secret conversations, and dripping openly.
As you explore the maze of rooms, you can easily imagine sultans smoking hookahs, reclining on pillows and Persian rugs, heavy curtains on the windows and incense burning from lamps. The walls and ceilings are covered with intricate patterns carved in wood and stucco. (If the Alhambra’s interlocking patterns look Escheresque, you’ve screwed it up: artist MC Escher was inspired by the Alhambra.) Since Muslim artists avoided depicting living things, they embellished with calligraphy—carving out jagged letters in Arabic, quoting poetry and verses from the Koran. One sentence – “Allah alone is sovereign” – is repeated 9,000 times.
The Generalife Gardens – with manicured hedges, reflecting pools, playful fountains, and an airy summer palace – are where sultans took a break from palace life. Its architect, in a way, was the Qur’an, which says that Paradise is like a verdant oasis, and that “those who believe and do righteous deeds will enter gardens through which rivers flow” (Qur’an 22.23).
The Alhambra’s much-photographed Courtyard of the Lions is named for its 12 marble lion fountains. Four channels lead the water outward—figuratively to the corners of the earth and literally to the sultan’s private apartments. As a poem carved on the wall of the Alhambra says, the fountain pours out “crystal clear water” as “the full moon casts its light from a cloudless sky.”
The largest room in the palace is the ornate throne room – the Grand Hall of Ambassadors. Here the Sultan, seated on his throne under a dome-like ceiling of stars, welcomed the guests. The ceiling, made up of 8,017 interlocking pieces of wood (like a giant puzzle), reveals the complexity of Allah’s infinite universe.
The throne room represents the passing of the torch in Spanish history. It was here in the year 1492 that the last Moorish king surrendered to the Christians. And it was here that the new monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, addressed Christopher Columbus “Sí, señor,” beginning their voyage to the New World that would make Spain rich. But the glory of the Alhambra remained, adding beauty and grace to Spanish art for centuries to come.
Today, the Alhambra stands as a thought-provoking reminder of an elegant Moorish world that might have blossomed across Europe—but didn’t.
