The Alhambra and Its Gardens: Reflections of the Past

Date: Wed, Aug 10, 2016 06:30PM - Wed, Aug 10, 2016 08:30PM
Price: $20, $18 Friends, $12 students and seniors

D. Fairchild Ruggles (University of Illinois) reimagines the Alhambra’s dramatic evolution from an abandoned site to a place of elegantly ornamented buildings and graceful courtyard gardens.

The Alhambra — the palace that was the seat of power for the Muslim dynasty that ruled Granada in the 13th-14th century — is a place of elegantly ornamented buildings and graceful courtyard gardens. Today the gardens are flourishing and the pools are filled with water, but this was not always the case. When the Muslim rulers were exiled in 1492, the palace became the property of the Spanish monarchs, but they never chose to live there and eventually the site was abandoned. It was only in the 19th century that travellers, designers, and architects began to value it again as a heritage monument. The palace that we admire today, therefore, had to be entirely replanted and restored by its new stewards.

D. Fairchild Ruggles is Professor of Landscape History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is the author of Islamic Art and Visual Culture (2008), and Islamic Gardens and Landscapes (2008), and Gardens, Landscape and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain (2000).