The palaces are not one building. They are three, built in the 14th century and arranged so that you move inward: the Mexuar, where the business of government was done; the Comares palace around the Patio de los Arrayanes, where ambassadors were received; and the Palacio de los Leones, the private quarters.
⭐ That sequence is the design. You start in rooms anyone could enter and end somewhere almost nobody could, and the decoration gets denser as you go.
The surfaces are plaster, tile and carved wood over a rubble core — which is why the effect is so light, and also why so much has been restored. The muqarnas vaults, the ones that look like frozen honeycomb, are hung rather than structural.
The walls are covered in writing: Qur'anic verse, poetry composed for the rooms, and the Nasrid motto, there is no victor but God, repeated everywhere once you learn to see it.
Look up constantly. Almost everything worth seeing in these rooms is above eye level.
Palacios Nazaríes, photographed
