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- Identity: the
building blocks of
2. Literature
and philosophy
3. Art and
architecture
4. Performing
arts
5. Cinema
and fashion
6. Media and
communications
7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
the details of
Pushed back to the confines of Granada, Moorish
architects excelled themselves between the 13thand
15 thcenturies.TheNasriddynasty built the Alhambra
palace, a final fling for Islamic design in Iberia that hit
new levels of subtlety and elegance. From the outside,
the location, perched on a hill overlooking Granada,
the snowy Sierra Nevada behind, is stirring, even if
the featureless fortress walls are not. Once within,
however, humble materials like wood, brick and plaster
are manipulated into mind-blowing ceilings, delicate
screens and blissful, arcaded courtyards.The Alhambra
was the final, brilliant instalment of the Moors’ search to
harmonise their buildings with nature using patios,
pools and natural patterns to render a serene earthly
paradise.
Converging styles: Mozarabic and Mudéjar
In Andalusia the Moors’ architecture found undiluted
expression, but elsewhere in Spain, as theReconquista
crawled south, the pure aesthetic was often twisted
by hybrid styles.Two particular modes emerged:
Mozarabic and Mudéjar.
What was Mozarabic architecture?
Mozarabic architecture was designed by Christians
who, groomed under Moorish rule, incorporated Islamic
ideas into Visigothic-style new builds as they fled north
to Spain’s reconquered territories. Little of it survives
today; only churches in lonely provinces like Soria offer a
rare glimpse of the derivative style. San Miguel de
Escalada, a Leonese monastery built in 913, is among
the best preserved of the plucky Mozarabic few, its
arch-topped colonnades and decorated wooden ceiling
showing how far Moorish design crept from its
Andalusian hub.
There but for the
grace of Allah
Somehow, the Alhambra
survives as the world’s
finest example of a
medieval Muslim palace.
After Granada finally fell
to theReyes Católicosin
1492 much of the palace
was whitewashed,
before Carlos V half built
a Renaissance palace in
the middle, a structure
that remains unfinished
today. The French blew
bits up in the Peninsula
War; indeed they were
minutes away from
dynamiting the whole lot
when some architecture
buff among Napoleon’s
forces managed to
diffuse the situation. The
final insult came with an
earthquake of 1821. The
Alhambra only really
survives today thanks to
painstaking restoration.
In fact, the modest
materials favoured by its
builders – timber, plaster,
tiles and so on – make
ongoing maintenance
essential.
