Researchers
The Alhambra
The Alhambra above Granada, al-Andalus's last palaces: a palatial city the Nasrids built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries on a hill looking over town and plain. In it stand the Court of the Lions with its fountain and slender arches, the Ambassadors' Hall with carved plaster seeming cut into silk not stone, and the muqarnas ceilings hanging like starry stalactites. On its walls Ibn Zamrak's poems run in Kufic and cursive: 'There is no victor but God' — the last Andalusi state's motto. Granada fell in 1492 but the Alhambra survived, becoming Europe's last museum of Islamic beauty, visited by millions each year. She is today the west's most famous Islamic monument: the visitor stands before civilization's question — how a state weak in politics can be beautiful in art, and how palaces stay witnessing when kingdoms depart.