Historicizing the landscape : recovering the aesthetics of the Alhambra

Abstract

The thesis explores the conception and evolution of the Alhambra as a monument during the 19th and 20th centuries. The contemporary monument encompasses a vast landscape complex saturated by nine hundred years of continuous occupation. The fragmented form of the palace complex, adapted and reconstructed for centuries, achieved coherence through the reification of tropes celebrating the landscape in 19th century travel literature. Travel was a contemplative practice of decomposing and recomposing the landscape through literature and visual representation. Travelers attempted to recapture and reconstruct a coherent image of the palace complex through the documentation and reconstruction of an imagined original. The aesthetic revival of the mythical productive landscape that once enfolded the Alhambra dominated the experience, hence the desire to recapture - and if necessary reconstruct - the landscape of the past is always present in the literature and the restoration and conservation projects of the last two centuries. Conservation projects were accompanied by the restoration of historic gardens, the design of new gardens, the symbolic revival of the famed irrigation system of the Muslims and the spatial organization of the monumental complex to accommodate its new central function as one of the world's primary tourist destinations.