The Alhambra - Installment 1: in Photos

One of the main things we've been excited about in Granada is seeing the Alhambra, a Moorish palace with intricate and varied tile work.  This installment will be photos only, then Maria will post one about the historical and cultural aspects of the Alhambra, followed by David who will make a short post about the mathematics of the tile patterns (he's hoping to create two half-hour interactive lectures on the relationship between art and math based on things from this trip which he can give next year).

Like many of the Catholic cathedrals we've seen, the goal of many rooms of the Alhambra is to be awe inspiring, and so photos really fail to capture them.  The most ornately decorated rooms are called the Nasrid palaces, which are covered, floor to ceiling with carved stone, plaster letter forms, and geometric tile patterns.  A photo can't capture both the detail and the full scope of these rooms, but we've done our best to give a representative sample.  Enjoy the photos for now, more information to come!

A view from the outer walls (as this was once a military outpost).

Maria looks back toward the city (we're staying in one of those white buildings!)

One of the decorated hallways leading to the Nasrid palaces.



A detail of a wall and ceiling (many of which have many thousands of individual polygonal faces)



We take a self-photograph among the columns!





A view of one of the detailed honeycomb ceilings.



This is one of many Arabic inscriptions worked in among the tile patterns.



This shows the Alhambra in the foreground.  It's taken from an area called the Generalife, which was reconstructed to represent a typical Moorish garden.