Generalife

The Generalife was the country retreat of the Nasrid sultans of Granada, a palace of gardens and water set on the slope of the Cerro del Sol, a short walk uphill and to the east of the Alhambra. It was built in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, most likely under Muhammad II or Muhammad III, and an inscription gives it a poetic official name, the House of the Felicitous Kingdom. The everyday name probably comes from the Arabic jannat al-arif, whose meaning is still argued over: garden of the architect, of the artist, or of the mystic.

The heart of the palace is the Patio de la Acequia, a long, narrow courtyard with a water channel running down its middle between flowerbeds, framed at each end by arcaded pavilions. The effect of water, shade and enclosed greenery is exactly what the place was built for. In the northern pavilion a small mirador, added in 1319, looks back across the valley to the towers of the Alhambra. Beyond, the Courtyard of the Sultana, reworked in the sixteenth century, holds an old cypress and a pool, and above it all rises the Water Stairway, a flight of steps with water running down channels cut into the tops of its balustrades.

Much of what visitors walk through today is a twentieth-century reinterpretation. Between 1931 and 1951 the architects Leopoldo Torres Balbás and Francisco Prieto Moreno redesigned the lower gardens, the Jardines Nuevos, giving them an Italian flavour. The Generalife belongs to the World Heritage site that also includes the Alhambra and the Albaicín, inscribed in 1984.

Getting there

The Generalife is within the Alhambra complex, about 2 km from the centre of Granada. Federico García Lorca Granada Airport (GRX) is about 17 km away. City buses C30, C32 and C35 run from Plaza Isabel la Católica up to the Alhambra, and the Generalife is about 15 minutes' walk from the main entrance.