The story of this place
Just uphill from the Alhambra, the Generalife was laid out in the early 14th century, around 1319 under Ismail I, as a rural summer palace and garden estate for the Nasrid rulers of Granada. Its name comes from Jannat al-Arif, 'the architect's garden' or 'garden of the overseer.' The Court of the Water Channel runs a long pool between arcing jets, the sound of water cooling the air in Andalusian summers—an engineering of leisure fed by channels from the Sierra Nevada snowmelt. After 1492 it passed to the Spanish crown; today its cypress walks host an annual international music and dance festival among the same fountains that soothed sultans.