Comares Palace in Alhambra: Architecture & History
The Palace of Comares
Stilted arches and interior angrelado. Variegated yeserías. Medallions brought into prominence. The doors are surrounded by ceramics. At the top, we have the timber roof, which is a frieze on roll corbels.
Following a narrow corridor with recesses, you find the Patio of the Myrtles or Comares. As a whole, it dates from the time of Yusuf I and was made before the year 1354. It is built on the palace that his father, Ismail I, had built before, which this one would later demolish. Yusuf I did not see the palace completed, but his son Muhammad V, in the second half of the fourteenth century, finished the work. It is the core, as it contains the remains of the highest quality.
Patio of the Myrtles
We see a backyard pool in the center, with two small jets at the ends. The reflection in the water is of great importance. It is rectangular. Myrtle hedges give the courtyard its name. On the short sides, two porches face the long sides. In the rooms or apartments are the wives of the Sultan, at two levels. The upper floor was used in winter. On the eastern side is the door to the Royal Baths. The main facade on the north side is symmetrical.
Sala de la Barca & Hall of Ambassadors
The Great Tower of Comares is preceded by the Sala de la Barca (Hall of the Boat), which houses the Hall of Ambassadors. This was the most important room of the Alhambra, as it was the throne room or reception hall. Boards form a long, narrow passage. The Sala de la Barca has a roof shaped like an inverted boat hull, hence the name. All the plaster of the walls is covered with inscriptions, including “Baraka”. It served as a lobby lounge for ambassadors and, during the summer, as the royal chamber. One of the most interesting aspects is the roof, which was reconstructed after a 19th-century fire. The scallops of mocárabe give way to an elongated, hemispherical roof termination.
This room is above the Hall of Ambassadors, a place of reception for arriving ambassadors, a space of political propaganda extolling the power of the caliph. This room is designed as a qubba (a square space covered by a dome, surrounded by three small rooms that open to balconies, through which all that is the landscape, acting as if they were lookouts), always of a commemorative nature. On an axis with the door, Yusuf I would be placed to receive visitors. The Hall is covered with profuse and colorful decor, metal from bottom to top for polychrome plasterwork, in many cases with various geometric effects, and original wooden ceilings. One of the masterpieces of Hispano-Moorish art is a wooden roof or ataujerada structure (the structure is not visible), plus a vaulted transept (split in cloth), resting on a stalactite frieze. It had a meaning: it is a vault, an astral evocation of paradise, and below this astral vault stood the Sultan; this model is constantly repeated.
The Royal Baths
The Royal Baths are between the Comares Palace and the Lions. They were built by Yusuf I and Ismail I and would suffer many reconstructions, especially in the nineteenth century. Access is via the northern part of the Comares Palace, through stairs and a small courtyard sunken with respect to Comares, copying the model of a Roman bath. It is a space for Apoditenyum or dressing, and then three successive rooms from cold to hot, and the final few rooms for services, hence the hiposcatyum part, have managed to warm the rooms. The rest room, or chamber of the beds, is kept in good condition. This room is a qubba whose roof rests on four columns, and in the center is a small fountain. There are two floors and a wooden roof; the second stories were intended for the guard and for people looking after the bathrooms. A column on a capital and a shoe supports the weight of the upper gallery.