After the Reconquista took the great cities of al-Andalus one by one, the Nasrid dynasty established in Granada in 1238 governed the last Muslim state on the peninsula. The Alhambra (al-Ḥamrāʾ, 'the red one') is the dynasty's palace-fortress; the form we know today is largely the work of Yusuf I (1333-1354) and Muhammad V (1354-1391).

Three distinct settlements — the Alcazaba (military citadel), the Nasrid palaces (court and private chambers), and the Generalife (summer garden) — interlock on a single hilltop. The architecture's power comes not from mass but from surface: stucco, wood, and tile cover every wall; no surface is left empty. Geometric lattice, vegetal arabesque, and Kufic calligraphy layer into a complex but coherent rhythm. The dome of the Comares Palace consists of over 8,000 wooden pieces arranged to form a cosmological diagram of the seven heavens.

At the centre lies the Court of the Lions (completed around 1377), with its fountain of twelve carved stone lions. The forest of slender marble columns around it — 124 of them — is the precise inverse of the heavy stone columns at the Mosque of Córdoba: Andalusian Islamic architecture reaches, at its end, its lightest and most floral form.

The Arabic inscriptions on the walls — verses by the Nasrid poet Ibn Zamrak — read the building in its own voice: 'I am a garden adorned with beauty.' On 2 January 1492 the last Nasrid sultan, Muhammad XII (Boabdil), handed the keys to the Catholic Monarchs; Andalusian Islamic political existence ended, but the palace survives almost intact. The Alhambra was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1984.