Province & Villages - Granada - Alhambra de Granada
Alhambra de Granada information
The Alhambra
Though the origins are confused, there are clear remains from
the 9th century, the Alhambra's most brilliant creations date
from the Nasrid Empire and the reign of Carlos V, between
the 13th and 16th centuries.
In its palaces, from the window of the mirador de Daraxa
to the mottled stone columns of the Carlos V palace, everything
in this complex is designed, planned and executed with only
the thought of perfection in mind. This perfection may approach
that of the Koran or Sunna or find itself closer to the Neo-Platonism
of the Renaissance. In the Alhambra, an Islamic world is sustained
over classical thought, a fact noy only perceptible in the
symbolic order of the emperor's palace; the Lion Court also
represents a monastic cloister, organized according to the
Golden section, the most highly classical of all proportions.
Naturally, there are different ways of interpreting the Alhambra:
the visitor may, for example, separate each one of its component
elements, gardens and palaces. However, it is surely more
revealing to approach its mystery as one who enters an unknown
city, uncovering its gates, walkways, streets and buildings,
elements of an organism which functions with the sophistication
and power of those who dwlt within it.
From the city, Granada, the Alhambra's presence on the hill
symbolizes nothing other than the splendour that the kingdom
once attained, the dominant social order that governed it:
the monarchs who inhabited the most beautiful of spaces, a
paradise Islam promised to its people. For that reason, the
Alhambra would represent both acropolis and paradise. Set
apart and distant, yet ever present, the granadinos climbed up to the Alhambra when they sought something from
power, even if they could merely enter the Mexuar, the palaces'
public area. The rest, as we all know, the labyrinth into
which only the prince and his rank could accede: from the
mathematical and cabalistic decoration of its tiles and plasterwork
to the movement of the stars in the honey - combed muquarnas of the sala de los Abencerrajes.
Carlos V understood it al to perfection and repeated the pattern
in a palace, squared to the four cardinal points, in which
the emperor's force could best manifest itself in an inscribed
circle, the symbol of divine power. If doubts remain, the
facade's decoration should recall the work of Hercules, a
myth with whom the emperor would often associate.
High above the palaces one finds a place where our dreams
merge with water in the most beautiful of the world's gardens,
the Generalife.
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