Photos

The Court of the Myrtles in the Nasrid Palace. My earlier photograph of the Comares Court was from the opposite side - which is in focus here.
The Comares palace completely surrounds the Patio of the Myrtles, myrtle being the plant which forms the hedges of this court. The Palace of Comares is considered one of the jewels of the Alhambra, with a beautiful pond flanked by two rows of hedges. On the left is the Tower of Comares, the highest tower of the Alhambra (45 meters).

In the Hispano-Muslim houses, the courtyard is vitally important. It is the core of family life, around which all the other rooms are distributed. It is difficult to distinguish the wealth of a family by looking at the external part of a house or palace, as opposed to its courtyard. The palaces are like houses but larger and more densely decorated, though with the same structural pattern and functions. The Court of the Myrtles takes its name from the dense bushes of this plant, also called mirth, that grow on the longer sides of the pond.
Originally these green areas were placed lower and with a greater variety of short trees to prevent their tops from rising too much.
The Pool plays an important part in the architectural and aesthetic definition of the site, with its surface of water that acts as a mirror and reflects the surrounding structures, generating a geometrical projection that breaks the structural horizontal lines of the place. The Court was paved with sizable white marble slabs, although at the end of the 16th century the floor was enlarged.
At the end of the courtyard you can enter a room to view the twelve Lion Statues from the fountain in the Court of the Lions, which was until recently undergoing renovation.