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The Alhambra, included as a World Heritage Site, is located in Granada, Spain. Splendid palace complex and fortress that housed the monarch and the court of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. The Alhambra is a walled city that occupies most of the Medina hill.
When the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand, conquered the kingdom of Granada, they expelled the king of Granada, Boabdil, who was sad at having lost what he called "the earthly paradise." And when he was leaving, he cried in front of his mother, looking back as he walked away, towards his Granada, and she told him: cry like a woman, what you didn't know how to defend like a man.
On the way to the Granada coast there is a mountain pass called "El Suspiro del Moro", a name that was obtained from this legend since from this point you can see the entire city and the Alhambra in the distance, and from where Boabdil is supposed to have stopped to admire his lost kingdom and could not help crying.
The most important buildings are: Alcazaba of the Alhambra with its Terrace of the Torre del Cubo, the Adarve of the northern wall, the Plaza de Armas with its Terrace, the Torre de la Vela, the Torre del Homenaje, the Torre de los Hidalgos, La Torre Quebrada, the Torre Adarguero, the Garden of the Adarves, the Nasrid Palaces: a complex formed by the Palace of Comares and the Palace of the Lions. Chronologically they were built after the citadel, the generalife and the Partal, their construction dating to the first third of the 14th century. It constituted the headquarters of administrative functions, of the court, protocol and retirement and private enjoyment.
When you go down the access stairs, you will find the following rooms: the Mexuar, which is the oldest room. In Arab times, the Patio del Mexuar or the Golden Room served as a courtroom and courtroom for important cases.
The fate given to this area in Arab times is not known with certainty. It is known that it was adapted as a room for Isabel of Portugal, for her stay in the Alhambra, although she never occupied it. On the façade of the room, the capitals of its entrance arch stand out. Inside the room, the ceiling stands out, made of cedar wood, and decorated with pine cones and shells. Below him, windows closed with lattices. Two rectangular covers bordered with ceramic border. The room is decorated with Gothic paintings and shields and emblems of the Catholic Monarchs.
The façade of the palace was erected by order of Mohamed V, being inaugurated in 1370, it is an interior façade that does not anticipate the majesty of the interior of the palace.
Thanks to the restoration of the lions and the cup of the fountain, it is known that both the lions and the cup date back to the 14th century and from the same origin and material (marble from Macael, Almería), with the fountain as a whole, both lions and cup, being manufactured at the same time. This discovery rectifies the information that indicated the origin of the lions in a palace, prior to the Alhambra, belonging to the first vizier of the Zirid dynasty Samuel Ibn Nagrella. In turn, three typologies of lions have been discovered based on their differentiating formal elements. Each one is made up of a group of four lions with two to two similarities in their features: nose, mane fur, jaws and position and relief of the tail. The fountain as such is an allegory of the power that resides in the sultan.
The Hall of the Kings, the Hall of the Two Sisters, the Hall of the mullioned windows and viewpoint of Daraxa or Lindaraja, the Emperor's Rooms, the Emperor's Room, the Queen's Comb Room, the Patio de la Reja or de los Cipreses, El Partal, etc.
The Baths are the jewel of the Arab house. Bathing for Muslims is a religious obligation. The Generalife, the Yannat al-arif in Nasrid times, is the villa with gardens used by the Muslim kings of Granada as a place of retreat and rest. The most important part is made up of its gardens, it was conceived as a rural villa, where ornamental gardens, orchards and architecture were integrated, in the vicinity of the Alhambra. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
There are about 10,000 inscriptions in the Alhambra, most of them poems, sentences, texts from the Koran and ejaculations. All are in classical Arabic and many correspond to the poets of the Court of Yusuf I in the 14th century. The chambers of the Nasrid king in the Comares palace are those with the largest number of texts, 3,116, 35% of the total, collected in the Epigraphic Corpus of the Alhambra, printed by the CSIC; these could be originally composed for the occasion or written in advance. Ibn al-Zayab, Ibn al-Khatib and Ibn Zamrak are the authors of most of them. The three writers formed the bulk of the poets at the court of Yusuf I.
