I bought a children's book of The Alhambra whilst there and the chapter about the buildings begins thus ... "For the poets the Alhambra is 'a crown on the brow of Granada', 'a paradise on earth', a dream, a treasure of harmony and light ... and many things besides. But let us leave the poets. What does the word Alhambra mean? It means 'red'. So that in the Arabic tongue 'alqala al hamra' means the red castle." Personally, I favour those words of the poets and only wish I had the talent to write more about this amazing place.
I took so many, many photos on our visit to the Alhambra in Granada. We managed to get tickets and were amongst the first visitors to enter. Thousands visit each day and you must pre arrange your visit or be disappointed. I am so glad we were first in as the crowds were enormous as the hours passed. We had about four hours looking around - you could spend days.
Books abound on this unbelievable and unforgettable building - site really, a collection of buildings which grew and changed over the centuries. My photographs do not compare with those that are published and I am not going to compete. Here below are a number of the hundreds of photographs I took. The first ones show only tiny glimpses of the detail of the Royal Palace. It is overwhelmingly glorious, and the following photographs show some of the details round about which caught my artist's eye.
