The Alhambra is not only the most important, but also the best conserved Arabian palace. The name Alhambra means "the red one" and refers to the color of the mountain, on which it is built. There are two entrances, in the north the Puerta de las Armas and in the south the Puerta de la Justicia, which lead to the first court an the mosque.
 

Most of the construction of the palace took part under Yusuf the first (1333-1354) and then his son Mohammed the fifth (1354 - 1391).  After the re-conquest, the Catholic Monarchs carried out some alterations and Charles the fifth built a Renaissance palace in the centre, which looks clumsy in comparison to the Moorish architecture and rather out of place. 
 

The palaces of the Alhambra; originally built by Ismael I for the juridical administration and later restructured by Muhammad the fifth. Under King Charles V the building was changed to be a Christian chapel. Main attraction is the splendid Golden Room with its Renaissance ceiling. The patio has 124 fine white marble column that are supposed to symbolize palm trees. Water flows in from four directions to the fountain of lions in the centre.
 

The Palacio de Comares was built by Yusuf I and is an arrangements of rooms around the central Patio de los Arraynes (Courtyard of the Myrtles). The smaller Mexuar Patio has a small washing fountain and the Comares facade, which shows some of the best Nasrite art available. Arabic script, with a repetitive phrase "La gallib illa Allah or There is no victor but God", runs around the stucco walls, along with a beautiful frieze of glazed tiles. The original colouring, which has now faded, was gold (royalty), red (power), green (paradise) and blue (hope of attaining paradise). There is a striking contrast between the ornate interior and plain outside, which was designed to symbolize the concept that inner life, i.e. family and spirituality, provides real wealth.
 

The dimensions allow to have nine adjoining rooms worked into the walls, which are ornamented with epigraphs from the Koran. Another attraction is the palace's Patio de los Arrayanes  a large court with columns of marble and a beautiful central fountain. The Palace of Muhammad V was the private residence of this Moorish king and is another highlight. Four great halls enclose the famous Patio de los Leones,  the "lions' court". The figures of lions that carry the fountain is a curiosity in arabian art, as the figurative representation of animals (as well as humans) is forbidden in Islam. Remarkable are as well the verses of poet Ibn Zamrak, which explain the function of the palace's very advanced irrigation plants.
 

The Hall of the Mozárabes got its name after the Christian architects of the time of the re-conquest from the Moors, which were themselves strongly influenced by Moorish style. In the case of this hall, they changed the original cupola for a baroque ceiling that is based on a central star motif, which is made up of muqarnas prisms, and merges into square-shaped ground plan of the room with the help of hanging Muqarnas spandrels. The Hall of the Abencerrajes got its name from an Arabian noble family, who was murdered in here. In the King's Hall we find paintings of the Arabian royal family. For the reasons mentioned above scientists doubt if those paintings are original or were made, after the re-conquest, by Christians. The most splendid hall is the Sala de las dos Hermanas, ("hall of the two sisters"). The beautifully worked-out ceilings show verses of Ibn Zamrak and are ornamented with gold and lapislazuli.
 

After the re-conquest The Palace of Charles V, reminds astonishingly to buildings of Italian renaissance. The reason is that its architect, Pedro Machuca, has been a student of Michelangelo in Florence. Today there are several museums inside of this palace: the National Museum of Spanish-Moorish Art, where you can see among many other important objects the famous seven jars of the Alhambra, works of glass-ceramics, and the Museum of Arts, mainly with works of the granadinian school from 15th to 20th century.
 

The Court of the Lions and its Dependencies
 

This most celebrated part of the Alhambra dates from Muhammad V's time. This was a closed composition of long and square or nearly square units around an open space surrounded by a portico, and a complex hierarchy of parts was involved, not merely in a quasi-two-dimensional facade-like order (as with the northern end of the Court of the Myrtles) but in three-dimensional space as well. 
 

The court itself is rather small (28.5 by 15.7 meters), and its surrounding portico with two projecting pavilions articulates the sides of the court in an unusually complicated manner. 

On the western side of the court there is simply a long hall, the Sala de los Mocárabes, with a Renaissance ceiling. The eastern end, known as the Hall of the Kings (Sala de los Reyes) is more complex. It consists primarily of three square units, higher than the rest and covered with domes of stucco muqarnas. These square units are framed and separated by five rectangular spaces with a heavy archway and a flat ceiling. The total effect is of a rhythmic succession of lit and dark parts which seems to lengthen the hall. Three alcoves separated by small rooms open from the Hall of the Kings. They are most celebrated for their ceiling paintings, whose exact iconography and origins have never been worked out but which are probably late fourteenth-century and reflect the impact on the Nasrids of northern, possibly even French style.

Walls, Towers, Gates
 

The first impression of the Alhambra is of a fortified enclosure, some 2,200 meters in perimeter, whose peculiar shape is obviously determined by the contours and defensive possibilities of the terrain. This enclosure was connected, in all likelihood, to the outer walls of the city at two points. At its western most end a wall which is still preserved led to the Vermilion Towers and in some unknown fashion connected with the wall surrounding the city from the south. Then at some distance to the northeast of the wall's westernmost edge traces remain of a wall that went down into the valley of the Darro and was probably part of the city's eastern and northern walls. A third connection with city walls, on the the eastern side, is proposed by some authors, but its archaeological or literary justification is not entirely clear. In any event the Alhambra was both a part of the city of Granada and independent of it, having its own direct contacts with the outside world. 
 

The impressively thick walls are of hard rubble faced with stone and brick masonry and covered with plaster. There are twenty-two towers, rather irregularly spaced in plan but adapted to the needs and requirements of the terrain. The towers have several notable peculiarities. First, they are not all alike: some are fairly simple and massive square towers; others either project towards the outside, almost like independent units of varying shapes, or they form large or small square units, with many windows and other types of openings, and contain major palatial establishments. The second peculiarity is that the latter group of towers is particularly characteristic of the northern side of the Alhambra, where nature itself provides the best defense. It seems that, whenever military considerations were secondary, towers tended to be transformed into constituent parts of no defensive units within the enclosure. This immediately raises the question whether the walls and towers are correctly interpreted as defensive or whether they were not simply a formal means of separating the aristocratic and royal area from the other one; the point of these walls and towers may have been less one of protection than of separation.

Alternatively, the difference between the northern and southwestern towers may be explained by the fact that the two groups correspond to entirely different sections of the interior, the northern being the zone of palaces, the southern being the city. It has been argued that there was a wall between the two zones inside the city itself, but the archaeological evidence, such as it is, does not seem absolutely convincing. In any event, the walls and towers can be interpreted as simply defensive and protective, as means of separating different kinds of lives, as reflections of internal planning, or as any combination of these purposes. But, whatever complexities one can introduce into their interpretations, a contemporary awareness of their military potential is established by the fact that one could move freely along the northern wall through passageways under the main palaces, avoiding the main royal complexes. Whether or not these passages predate the fourteenth-century constructions above them remains a moot question. 
 

The Gate of Law, plan
 

Four main gates (other than posterns or late openings) led into the great Alhambra enclosure. The first and most important one, on the southwestern side, is the Bab al-Shari`ah, the Gate of Justice, or more precisely, the Gate of Law, dated by an inscription of 1348. It is unusual in several ways. Its peculiar projection and the fact that the formal doorway with the official foundation inscription is perpendicular to the wall may be explained by the sloping terrain on which it was built, but other features are more difficult to interpret. One is the deep porch placed in front of the entry, as though some ceremony took place there. The ceremonial character of the monument is further emphasized by several architectural and decorative details. For instance the interior, with its two turns, contains three different kinds of vault: an elongated cross vault, a cupola, then three traditional cross vaults. It is almost as though the architect or the patron sought to show off his technical versatility. 
 

The Gate of Law
 

On the front of the building a hand was carved on the keystone of the arch, while a key with a cord appears on the center of the inner archway, and the Muslim profession of faith was carved on the handsome capitals of the engaged columns framing the door. The first two of these symbols are not altogether clear, and became a subject of debate as early as in Théophile Gautier's description; and the occurrence of the formal "There is no God but God; Muhammad is His Prophet; there is no force or power except in God" is rare on gates to fortresses, especially when independent of the dedicatory inscription. Finally, if it is correct to assume that the outer walls of the Alhambra belong to the latter part of the thirteenth century, this gate, with its formal inscription, its unusual name and construction, and its decoration, must have been a fourteenth-century addition of Yusuf I with apparently very specific symbolic and functional purposes. Much has been made of its name, the Gate of Islamic Law, and some have argued that it was the place where justice was meted out. Since this interpretation is connected with the much broader problem of the ceremonial, symbolic, or practical meanings to be given to various parts of the Alhambra, discussion of it will be postponed to the next chapter. 
 

The second door on the south side, now known as the Gate of the Seven Heavens, had originally the far more prosaic name Bab al-Ghudur, "Gate of the Cisterns." With its huge semicircular projecting bastion and its twenty two meter high towers, it is the most impressive of the Alhambra gates, even though its forward bastions were blown up by Napoleon's retreating army. But, impressive as it is, it has only a single turn and is in plan quite unexceptional. 
 

The Gate of Arms
 

The third gate, on the northeastern side, is the ancient Iron Gate (Bab al-Hadid), known today as the Arrabal Gate and connected with the primarily defensive complex of the Torre de los Picos. It was apparently the main way of reaching the Generalife and seems to have been primarily a private passageway rather than a formal entry into a palatial compound. As with so many other "Gates of Iron" found all over the Muslim world, it is possible that the original name was Bab al-Jadid, "the New Gate," and that the association with metallic solidity is but a scribal preference over mundane novelty, the letters for "J" and "H" being almost identical in Arabic. 
 

The last of the Alhambra gates is the Gate of Arms, almost at the extreme west of the enclosure. It was the only gate connecting the Alhambra directly with the city of Granada. Difficult to reach from the outside, it rose into the oldest fortified part of the Alhambra and is justly celebrated for its superb vaults.
 

The Generalife
 

It is difficult to discuss the Alhambra without some mention of the Generalife and the various pavilions and gardens above it. The name itself, known already in the fourteenth century, is a corruption of Jinnah al-`Arif, for which two interpretations have been proposed: "the Garden of the Architect," or "the Noblest of Gardens." Most of the present layout of the gardens themselves is modern, and many of the buildings have been much restored and rebuilt. The importance of the Generalife for our purpose - to set the archaeological stage for an explanation of the Alhambra - lies in two of its features. 
 

The first, already mentioned, is that some of it is earlier than the main palaces of the Alhambra, already having been partly completed by 1319. It may, therefore, have played a role in the formation of the palaces, although it is difficult to know whether this role was accidental, in the sense that its water supplies preceded those of the Alhambra, or whether the Alhambra should be considered as the royal residence built next to already existing princely gardens. 
 

The other pertinent feature of the Generalife is that it is a monument typologically unique in combining public and private, with two independent entrances, one from the Alhambra below, the other from the south and the outside; it seems, therefore, to belong to a somewhat different order of use from the Alhambra proper, less secluded and less restricted. The main part of the General life consists of a long pool now surrounded by plants, with two loggias on the long sides and two complexes of buildings at the narrow ends. One was complicated, containing several rooms and interior courts; the other consisted of a portico, a long hall, and a square mirador higher up. Above this main part were more gardens and waterways, including the celebrated one with water running in the handrail of a staircase ramp. These stairs led to an oratory and, even higher up, to several additional pavilions, now mostly gone, one of which was romantically named the House of the Bride, Dar al-`Arusah.