The mountain capital of the last Muslim state in Iberia, seat of the Nasrid dynasty and their Alhambra, whose surrender in 1492 ended the Reconquista.
Granada lies on the northern slopes of the Sierra Nevada in south-eastern Iberia, a naturally defensible site that made it the last refuge of Muslim power in the peninsula. From the 13th century it was the capital of the Nasrid Emirate of Granada.
The city is crowned by the Alhambra, the fortified palace-city of the Nasrid emirs, whose halls and courts are the supreme achievement of medieval Andalusi architecture. Granada's surrender in 1492 marks the conventional end of the Reconquista.
For over two centuries Granada flourished as the seat of a wealthy, cultured emirate, its population swollen by Muslims fleeing the Christian conquests further north. Trade, learning and craft sustained it even as its territory shrank.
The Alhambra and the neighbouring Generalife gardens, built and adorned above all under Yusuf I and Muhammad V in the 14th century, remain the city's glory. After 1492 Granada became a Castilian city, but its medieval Nasrid fabric still defines it.