AlhambraRed walls on the hilltop

From the hillside into the courtyards

Granada, Spain — Palace and fortress complex.

Look up from the foot of the hill first.

The path up has tree shade, and the wall appears in stretches through the trees — earth-red, with square merlons, giving no hint of its size inside. The gateways are none of them wide; pass one and the light changes. Reach the side that overlooks the city and below is a dense slope of white houses, the Sierra Nevada far off. Wind rises from the valley, a little cooler than in town.

Enter the palace courtyards and the sound changes first. Water runs from a narrow channel into a pool, the only continuous noise anywhere. A colonnade stands around the walls on slender columns whose capitals spread upward, and beneath the eaves is dense stucco carving. The worn floor throws a reflection that doubles the columns in length. Pass through a dim hall and you suddenly stand in a bright court — the eyes need a moment — and further in, the small niches hanging from the dome cut the light into many pieces.

Work began on the hilltop in 1238

These buildings began in 1238 under Muhammad I of the Nasrid dynasty, founder of the Emirate of Granada. The site is the Sabika hill, a rocky spur of the Sierra Nevada; a fortress already stood there, and in the eleventh century there had been the palace of Samuel ibn Naghrillah.

The location was not chosen for looks alone. The ridge falls on three sides and overlooks the city; water led down from the hill could run as its own system. Later Nasrid rulers kept changing it, and two major building campaigns under Yusuf I and Muhammad V in the fourteenth century fixed the form of the palace courtyards.

In the Nasrid period this was a self-contained small city, separate from the main town: a Friday mosque, public baths, roads, houses, workshops and tanneries, plus a careful water supply. At least six major palaces lined the northern edge, with windows over the Albaicín; the best preserved today are the Mexuar, the Comares Palace, the Palace of the Lions and the Partal Palace.

After 1492

The Reconquista ended in 1492 and the site became the royal court of Ferdinand and Isabella; Columbus received royal backing in these rooms before his voyage, and part of the palace was put to new use. In 1526 Charles V ordered a Renaissance palace built beside the Nasrid palace, and the two languages were set side by side.

Over later centuries it slowly fell into disrepair, houses were occupied, and in 1812 Napoleon's troops destroyed a section. The turn came through travellers: romantic writers from Britain, America and elsewhere reached it through the nineteenth century, and Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra (1832) drew outside attention back to the hill.

It is also among the earliest Islamic buildings studied as a scientific object; it has been restored many times since the nineteenth century and is now a World Heritage site. The walls and domes you see today mix repairs from different eras; focus on the forms and the layering of patterns rather than chasing which bit of plaster was patched in which year.

How water and light are organised

At the west end is the Alcazaba fortress, with several small towers and gates still on its walls; east of the walls lies the Generalife. The ridge path links these parts into one line, switching constantly between outdoors and semi-outdoor dim halls.

Water is the skeleton of these courtyards. Narrow channels lead it to the pools, which hold down the temperature and turn the colonnades and daylight into a layer of reflection. The dense stucco patterns break into many small shadows in direct light, but merge into one warm tone on cloudy days — the same courtyard can have two expressions in a day.

Walk from the courtyards to the city-viewing terrace and the fine, dense things suddenly fall behind you; before you is a spread of white houses and distant mountains. Tight first, loose after — that is how this hill arranges your view.