Les secrets de l'Alhambra nasride

A jewel of Islamic art and the only Muslim palace complex preserved in the West, the Alhambra is one of the world’s most visited monuments. The exhibition highlights the Alhambra as it was built by the Nasrid sultans — very different from the present fortress — revealing and decoding some of its secrets at the height of its splendor under Sultan Muhammad V in the 14th century, through a captivating immersive walk punctuated by splendid works of art.

Evoking the genius of the Court of the Lions, the poetry of water, the geometric complexities of the decoration, the refinement of epigraphy that gives the palace a voice, the grandeur of sultanic festivities, the sensuality of the gardens, and cultural exchanges despite constant military tensions: this exhibition tells the story of the Nasrid Alhambra, illuminates its splendor and unveils some of its mysteries.

Guided walk-through of the forthcoming exhibition

The beauty of the Alhambra might make one forget that it was first and foremost a fortress, surrounded by walls and towers and garrisoned, and that the Nasrid emirate was in reality a state on borrowed time, threatened and steadily eroded by its neighbors. Alongside a selection of weapons, armor and harness pieces, the immersive experience will allow visitors to discover a hidden and little-known masterpiece of Arabic painting depicting the return of a victorious military expedition.

The Court of the Lions, which has given its current name to the palace that houses it, is the most iconic room of the Alhambra and a masterpiece of Nasrid art; it was altered over the centuries following the Christian conquest. What did it look like during the reign of Muhammad V, who commissioned its installation? Around a replica of the fountain, visitors will encounter various scholarly hypotheses about the fountain’s meaning, form and operation. A major element of the exhibition, this display will also serve to address the importance of water for the entire palace complex, both aesthetically and as essential to the very life of the site.

To exalt the perfection of divine creation without attempting to imitate it, Muslim artists, and the Nasrids in particular, employed abstraction made possible by mathematical rigor. Thus the whole building, both architecturally and ornamentally, is based on the infinite repetition of geometric motifs. Decorative patterns arise from compositions made of motifs that move and rotate according to every possible type of symmetry, in turn giving rise to a wide variety of new geometric forms. A section of the exhibition is dedicated to these designs and to their method, presenting a major artistic principle typical of the Muslim world, developed across different media, whether the palace’s tiled walls or the art objects that adorned it: silks, manuscripts, woodwork, marquetry, and so on.

A fundamental element of the Alhambra’s aesthetic, color is exalted by light, which produces chromatic effects and motion across various ornamental motifs. The spectacle of this intense polychromy, now only partially perceptible, will be made possible through immersive techniques that emphasize the play of light on the Lindaraja ceiling as well as the details and delicacy of the muqarnas and other ceiling decorations.

The walls of the Alhambra are covered with texts. Far from serving a merely decorative function, these inscriptions are literally the palace’s voice. Visitors are invited to discover the different styles of calligraphy and to read certain inscriptions by deciphering them within complex ornamental patterns — mottos, the word baraka, poems, Qur’anic quotations — while soaking in their musicality through audio recordings of their recitation. Again, a carefully chosen selection of works of art will show that this decorative principle based on calligraphy is far from being confined to the palace walls alone.

Despite the fluctuating relations between the Nasrid emirate and neighboring states, artistic exchanges were particularly fruitful, as evidenced by works coming from both Christian and Islamic worlds. The exhibition will also decode the paintings of the Hall of the Kings, whose iconography is strikingly unexpected in a Muslim palace.

Historical sources and diwans of poetry recount the sumptuous festivities held within the palace precincts on the occasion of the mawlid (the Prophet’s birthday), royal weddings or the circumcisions of the sultan’s sons. To recreate their atmosphere and splendor, the exhibition, set to a musical backdrop, showcases magnificent works and presents a reconstruction of the automaton displayed at the mawlid of 1362.

The exhibition concludes with a sensuous evocation of the garden. Is the Alhambra not itself a metaphor for the garden? Beyond the references to the garden of paradise or earthly gardens carved on its walls, the fortress contains real gardens, both ornamental and productive. On display is an installation created for the occasion, based on scientific knowledge about the Alhambra’s gardens, which appeals to the senses — notably hearing and smell…