A Visit to the Alhambra, Granada, Spain

Wall decoration (detail) from a reception hall, Alhambra

An amazing place, the Alhambra, a riot of decoration and visual astonishment. Designed to impress, the product of centuries of artisans beavering away in royal workshops.

We had a hard time getting tickets, and eventually signed up for a tour. We were happy with Oscar, (Bookyourtour.com), who kept us moving. This was a good thing, because otherwise we might have been paralyzed with dazzlement. 

Do I exaggerate? The Alhambra is really big, and we saw only part of it in terms of ground covered. A lot of the hilltop where the Alhambra is situated is really archaeological excavations, and some of it is no more than foundations in this latter day. Here is a copy of the map - zoom in for closer detail:

That central group of buildings with red roofs is where we went (#20-31 on the map). The Nasrid Palaces. Omit from consideration the large square with a cirular space - it's much later, by Charles V.

The Nasrid dynasty took Granada in 1232 from an earlier Islamic dynasty (Moslems had arrived in Spain in the year 711). Mohammed I al-Ahmar started with the fortress at the tip of the hill in 1238, and from then on Yusufs, Ismails, and Mohammads built and built, until at last Mohammad XII Boabdil was conquered in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Five hundred years later, some things have changed, but a lot of the early intentions of the Nasrids are still visible.

Our path through the Alhambra basically followed the dotted line on the map until we doubled back for a break after a few hours and ended up bagging the rest of the tour and going to lunch instead. 

Dear reader, it was easy to get lost! Progressing from room to room, from decoration to decoration, each more over-the-top than the last, I had a hard time keeping the functions of the rooms straight. 

Well, that's me - Julianne is probably better at purpose while I wander off to look at curlicues. Let me make a bit of an outline. 

The Nasrids had three basic areas of activity: justice, politics, and living quarters. The halls of justice are gone, though one tower remains (#61 on the map). Their mosques are also gone though the foundation of one is still visible, offset from the other buildings because it faces Mecca. On the map, it's close to #20. 

The public reception halls and throne rooms seem to occupy #20-23, and maybe more. Here are some pictures from that part of the Alhambra.

Gate to the early fortress, 13th century

Gate to the Nasrid palaces, 14th century

Frieze around the top of a wall

Ceiling detail, pieced wood

One thing I eventually came to notice about these decorations is that the design work takes some advantages of angles, squares, and straight lines. There is also a lot of attention to the name of the Nasrid dynasty, according to our guide. Here is an example:

The Arabic lettering repeats the name of the dynasty over and over

If you glance back at the image at the top of this post, and at the image of the Nasrid entrance gate, you'll see other examples of the dynasty name. Here's some more carving that depends on Arabic:

We've moved on to the family quarters now

 You clearly get the idea that the surface decoration of the Alhambra is overwhelming. It's not all geometric, by any means. Especially in the harem, or family quarters, there are lots of leaf-and-flower forms, arabesques, curlicues.

But by now, dear reader, you are probably totally tired of surfaces, and wishing you could learn something about how people actually lived in these palaces. This was not visible to us, generally speaking, though of course we already knew that men and women lived separate lives in separate spaces.

We really found out nothing about what people ate, how children were educated, how long people lived, or how jobs were distributed. The empty spaces told us little, and the guide said nothing about these things.

We did hear about the importance of water.

In dry climates, water is a focus of power and beauty. There are some beautiful fountains, and gardens, in the Alhambra. Here's a sample:

There's also a sense of enclosure, of protection, of turning away from the outside to focus on the interior. One is screened from the rest of the world. This might have something to do with climate, or we can speculate it could be related to an unavoidable uneasiness at the heart of power. I might be taking that too far.

No matter. Clearly the inside is the focus, and the building turns a blind face to the outside world, while ornamenting the interior within an inch of its life. Consider arches and domes. A little book I bought (Islamic Design, by Daud Sutton, Wooden Books, 2007) names these stalactite forms muqarnas, and says they cover domes and archways as architectural devices to spread load and make transitions between round and square forms. As well as present imagery of celestial light condensing into matter. They're quite fantastic, and we saw many examples in the Alhambra:

We've seen this icicle-like decoration in Istanbul and Damascus, among other places, but this is some kind of pinnacle, a confection beyond what we've seen before. Quite astonishing, and we were astonished, and then we went to lunch.

I had warm goat cheese and quince jam grilled on slices of toast. Ah. Julianne had a sandwich which she describes as tasty but not special. Then I went to look at the other architectural style in this complex, early Renaissance, Charles V's palace from the 16th century. Much plainer. Austere, even. Clearly a very different way of thinking was involved:

With this building, we are in a recognizably modern world. 

by Nancy