to him by Charles V., and over it is the following epitaph, or something
like it: "Here lies the Great Roldano, a dog belonging to Prince Gio.
Andrea Doria, who, for his fidelity and goodness, was considered to
merit this memorial. In life, for years, he nobly obeyed both these
laws. In death we must place his ashes by the side of those of the beast
that perishes. A companion worthy indeed of his regal donor. Died at 11
years and 10 months of age, in September of 1605, the 8th day, at 8
o'clock at night."
In the centre of the garden, facing the sea, and from whence Prince
Doria may have looked on his fleet of twenty-two galleys at anchor
in the harbor, is a fountain, and in it a statue in which he is
represented as Neptune. Doria's tomb is in the crypt beneath the high
altar of the church of San Matteo, and it is here also that the sword he
received, in 1535, from Paul III., for the services he had rendered the
church, is deposited. In the piazza adjoining there is a house with an
inscription over it, to the effect that it was given to Andrea Doria by
the republic. Here he once lived, and it was in an open square in front
of it that he assembled his fellow-citizens to consult with them on the
best way of repulsing the French, when they besieged Genoa in 1528. The
house is now used as a shop,--for pictures and old furniture on the
ground floor, and for stationery on the upper story. It, and the church
of San Matteo, which has always been under the patronage of the Dorias,
are both built of alternate layers of black and white marble. This
magpie style of construction was confined to public edifices, but four
patrician families--the Doria, Grimaldi, Spinola, and Fieschi--were
allowed the privilege of using it....
If Genoa is a fair city by day, she is a still fairer one by night,
when the innumerable lights on all sides make it look as if the stars
had come down from heaven, and give the whole place an appearance of
fairy-land. There are lights all round the harbor and on the quays;
lights above the hills, and below in the old town; lights in the gardens
of the cafes and in the streets, making them, and the gay company that
crowds them, more brilliant than when seen in the full glare of mid-day.
The fireflies flit and flicker, but never rest as they hold their
evening revels among the bushes and trees, and over the grass and
flowers.
A charity bazaar was held every night on the Acqua Sola, when the
fountains were illuminated with gas, and rings of light spanned the
trunks of the great trees, and darling arches were placed over the
garden paths. All the decorations were exceedingly pretty and light, as
they were of gas arranged to represent branches of laurel, or lyres, or
such like devices. There were not many stalls,--two dozen, perhaps; but
these were in the fanciful shape of chalet or kiosk, and the Genoese
ladies, in their temporary character of shopwomen, sat within them, with
no covering on their heads but a white veil, and a rose at one side.
The orthodox band played inside the fair, for part of the garden was
walled off, so only to admit of those who had tickets; whilst another
band just outside appeared to be trying hard to outblow it. A little
farther on, at the Cafe d'ltalie, the band of the Guides, in their
light blue and silver uniform, charm the eaters of ice and drinkers of
lemonade by their music, and make them linger at their little tables.
This place is a favorite resort in the evening of the Genoese men (where
they put all the women is a mystery, as the streets are crowded with the
nobler sex of every class, whilst scarce any Italian fair ones of any
kind are to be seen), and it is, for light and brilliancy, a very
transformation scene. The lamps gleam from amidst beds of flowers and
groves of orange-trees that make the air faint with their sweetness;
and in the centre of the garden, under a kind of tent, is a large
cocoanut-tree, with a branching green head and a cluster of lamps
beneath to represent the fruit. And from the statues and fountains, and
trees and arches, rose-colored and white lamps are hung, and being all
of ground glass, they shed a subdued, mysterious light around the idlers
who crowd the seats and benches. In fact, Genoa never looks as if she
intended to go to bed at all; and the cool summer nights, the stars, the
lamps, the sweet scent of the flowers, and the bands of music make it so
pleasant a time that one cares not to think of to-morrow.
THE ALHAMBRA.
S. P. SCOTT.
[Among the many marvels of architecture left by the
Mohammedans, as landmarks of their outflow over the earth, none
have elicited more admiration than the remains of the Alhambra
at Granada. This celebrated group of Saracenic edifices has
suffered little from time, but much from ignorance and
vandalism, of which the most deplorable instance is the
demolition due to the Emperor Charles V., in his insane effort
to better the work of the Moors. This palace and fortress of
the Moorish caliphs of Spain is eloquently described in the
following selection.]
Few readers need to be told that the kingdom of Granada at the period of
the Conquest was one of the richest and most flourishing countries in
the world. Its fertile valleys embraced the garden of the Peninsula; its
industrious population had carried agriculture to a degree of perfection
unknown to modern times; its mountains yielded great quantities of the
precious metals; its manufactures of silk and porcelain found a ready
market in the courts of semi-barbaric Europe; the commerce of Almeria
and Malaga, its principal seaports, extended to the Indies. As the
victorious arms of Castile and Aragon gradually encroached upon the
provinces of Andalusia, the remains of that extraordinary civilization
which, in the ninth and tenth centuries, had raised the Western
khalifate to such a height of prosperity and renown, took refuge in
Granada. To the beautiful capital, that included within its walls
nearly half a million souls,--among them many thousand Jews and
Christians,--fled the exiles of the conquered cities, bringing with them
that advanced knowledge of the natural and exact sciences which, after
surviving the vicissitudes of four hundred years of revolution and
invasion, the ferocious bigotry of the Spanish clergy, more intolerant
by far than the rude barbarism of Africa, threatened with utter
extinction.
Here, under the protection of a race of sovereigns who rivalled each
other in promoting the happiness of their subjects, a new impulse was
imparted to the study of astronomy and medicine, and literature and the
mechanical arts found in the tastes and habits of a luxurious people
an ample field for their development. And here began the third and
most glorious period of Arab art as displayed in its application to
architecture, which, appropriating to itself all that was valuable in
the experience of former ages,--ages which had witnessed the erection
of the Mosque of Cordova and the Giralda of Seville,--soon disclosed
a splendor and variety of decoration peculiarly its own, and, after
filling the kingdom with its monuments, attained its climax in the
creation of that masterpiece of human skill, the fairy palace of the
Alhambra....
The Alhambra, the stronghold of a prince who united the triple functions
of civil, military, and religious head of his people, stands on an
isolated hill five hundred feet above the plain, or Vega. This hill,
which romantic native writers love to compare to a _granada_, or
pomegranate, thence deriving the name of their favorite city, is half a
mile long by eight hundred feet wide, and is entirely surrounded by
walls. Traversing a grove of elms that covers the slope nearest the
Genil, we reach the Gate of Justice, a massive tower forming the
entrance to the fortress. The seat of the _kadi_, or civil magistrate,
who here settled all disputes not deemed important enough to be carried
before the sultan, the Gate of Justice was regarded with peculiar
veneration by the Moors. Innumerable are the legends connected with this
spot, many of them traceable to the mysterious hand and key carved upon
the outer and inner arches of the portal. The hand, an unfailing
talisman against the evil eye, was symbolical of the five precepts of
Islam,--prayer, fasting, alms, ablution, and the pilgrimage to Mecca;
the key referred to the dominion given to the Prophet over heaven and
hell, and was the badge of the kings of Andalusia. The old gate is well
preserved; the cement covering the masonry is as smooth as when laid on;
the ponderous bronze doors which opened to admit the Christian armies on
the memorable 2d of January, 1492, are still in their places, so also
are the racks that sustained the lances of the Moorish guard.
We next enter the Plaza de los Algibes, a square of comparatively modern
date, which lies between the palace and the Alcazaba or citadel,--these
two portions of the sultan's residence having been originally separated
by a wall, of which the gate, now called the Puerta del Vino, alone
remains. Fronting the venerable Moorish battlements rises the facade of
the palace of Charles V., with the arms and trophies of the most
arrogant and crafty of emperors.
[This structure was erected with the aid of money wrung from
the Moors themselves, as a bribe to the emperor and his
officials to suspend the work of the Inquisition.]
The winter residence of the Moors, that seems to have equalled the
remainder in magnificence, and was probably of greater extent, was
razed, the fountains were removed, the doors and balustrades broken up,
and the stuccoes carted away as rubbish. Founded thus in the misery of
the most intelligent and thrifty portion of his subjects, and upon the
ruins of that unrivalled palace,--the boast and glory of the Western
empire of the Khalifs,--the ill-omened design of Charles V. was destined
never to be carried to completion. His attention soon became engrossed
by the discovery and conquest of Mexico and Peru, and this costly toy,
neglected and forgotten, was long utilized as a ring for bull-fighting,
being now degraded to the vilest uses of the beggars of Granada.
The gorgeousness of Moorish architecture, which, with its enamelled
tile-work, its gilded domes and filigree arcades, speaks so eloquently
of Oriental luxury, bursts suddenly upon us as we pass, by a narrow
gate-way opened in the seventeenth century, from the Plaza de los
Algibes into the Court of the Myrtles. On the right is the portico of
what was once the winter palace, on the left the Tower of Comares,
containing the Hall of the Embassadors, the largest apartment of the
Alhambra. The great basin occupying the centre of the court is bordered
by hedges of myrtle interspersed with orange-trees. Arabic inscriptions
cover the walls and galleries, and in the latter appear the identical
jalousies which once screened from vulgar gaze the voluptuous charms of
the wives and favorites of the sultan. This court, the only part of the
building to which the public were ever admitted, was the theatre of
frequent intrigues of the hostile factions that contended for the
mastery even while the common enemy was thundering at the gates, and to
whose bitter feuds, as much as to the valor of the Christian arms,
should be attributed the downfall of the kingdom. In the Court of the
Myrtles were received the flower of the Castilian chivalry, who upon
grand occasions came to compete for the prize of knightly skill and
courtesy in the famous Plaza de la Bibarrambla; here were entertained
the picturesque envoys of the distant East, bringing greeting from the
lords of Cairo and Ispahan; here the captive bishop of Jaen defied
the monarch, and was sent to labor with his fellow-slaves upon the
fortifications of the city; and here the fiery old Abul Hacen,
surrounded by his harem, listened with gloomy forebodings to the
predictions of the astrologer announcing the loss of his empire and
the extinction of his race, and endeavored to forget his fears in the
stirring ballads of his ancestors, or in the caresses of the beautiful
Zorayda, the "Star of the Morning."
The Hall of the Embassadors occupies the whole of the Tower of Comares,
and was used for coronations and royal festivals. From the balconies
which replace the curious Moorish lattices of its alcoves we look down
upon the gypsy quarter of the Albaycin, and the cypress groves that
fringe the banks of the Darro, so named from its sands of gold. In this
brilliant hall, during the closing days of the siege, Aixa, the mother
of Boabdil, learned for the first time that he had been arranging for
a capitulation; and, leading him to one of the windows, she threw open
the gilded lattice and bade him look below. The last rays of the sun
disappearing behind the Sierra Elvira lighted up the landscape, and
through the purple haze, which hung like a veil over the lovely Vega,
sparkled the domes of mosque and villa and the battlements of many a
shapely tower and minaret. It was the hour of prayer, and the shrill
tones of the muezzin, as turning towards each point of the compass he
summoned the faithful to their devotions, mingling with the clash of
arms and the cheers of the populace as they hailed the return of some
valiant band from the successful foray, rose faintly to the lofty
ramparts of the castle. A wilderness of orchards and vineyards which the
ravages of war had spared still covered the mountain-side. The score of
palaces with which the voluptuous Alhamares had embellished the environs
of the capital still displayed their wonted beauty; though over more
than one floated the hated banner of the infidel, whose intrenched lines
appeared in the distance, encircling like a band of steel the walls of
the devoted city. The quaint houses, red and white, with terraced roofs,
and embowered amid verdant groves, recalled the simile of the poet who
likened Granada to "a silver vase full of hyacinths and emeralds." The
Genil and the Darro, which the ancient Syrian invader had pronounced
rivals of Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, could be traced for
leagues, as, after turning the wheels of more than three hundred mills,
they distributed their refreshing waters, until lost in the innumerable
canals that, like a net-work of glittering threads, spread far and wide
over the fertile plain.
As the cowardly king gazed in silence on a scene which, including the
fairest portion of his dominions, offered a view unequalled in the
world, his mother, who united the courage of a soldier with the
vindictiveness of the renegade, indignantly said, "See what you are
about to surrender, and remember that all of your ancestors died kings
of Granada, and that their line will end with you." The tears stood in
Boabdil's eyes as he turned away, but the remonstrance had come too
late. The truce was already signed; and three days later, attended by
his mournful retinue, he left the fortress by the Gate of the Seven
Stories, and departed for his little principality in the Alpujarras.
The Court of the Lions, which communicates with the Court of the Myrtles
by means of a short passage, is rectangular in form, and is surrounded
by galleries and pavilions supported by columns of white marble. To the
right is the Hall of the Abencerrages, where, tradition says, the chiefs
of this noble tribe were beheaded one by one in the presence of Boabdil;
and beyond is the Hall of Justice, noted as the place where the rites of
the Christian religion were first celebrated after the Conquest. It was
used as a chapel while the cathedral was building, and differs in plan
from the other halls, being divided into a suite of rooms crowned with
little cupolas. The ceilings of its alcoves are covered with rude
paintings of unknown origin, almost obliterated by time and neglect.
The Court of the Lions, renowned in ballad and chronicle, is the
culminating point of the beauties of the Alhambra. No pen can describe
them, no pencil can delineate them. The strange Cufic letters, the
lace-work of the graceful arches, the stalactitic pendants of the domes
blazing with scarlet and gold, the texts of the Koran meeting the glance
at every turn, the long colonnades through which slant the rays of
sunlight from the jalousies above, the chequered floors, the gorgeous
tiles incrusting pilaster and wall, dazzle the eye with their splendor.
And if now, with their ornaments cracked and faded, stained with damp
and defaced by vandal travellers, these scenes can so enthrall the mind,
what were they in the days of their glory, when the gilded arcades rang
with the laughter of the houris imprisoned here, and black eunuchs, in
silken robes and armed with jewel-hilted scimitars, guarded with jealous
care these treasures of the harem!
On the north side of the court is the Hall of the Two Sisters,
unsurpassed in the elegance of its decorations. Its divans are models of
taste and richness, its enamels are the most curious in Spain. The broad
inscriptions, that, twined with buds and leaves, are so conspicuous, are
poems in praise of the builder, and amid the snowy arabesques appears at
frequent intervals his shield, bearing the devout motto of the
Alhamares, "There is no conqueror but God."
Did space permit, much might be said of the subterranean apartments of
the Alhambra,--the cisterns, the baths, the dungeons, the magazines; of
the little oratories or mosques, mementos of the piety of the Moslem; of
the isolated towers, each forming a miniature palace, with guard-room
and courts and hall of state, their boudoirs cooled by the spray from
alabaster fountains, their walls incrusted with precious mosaics
resembling tissues of brocade. In the corridor under the Tower of
Comares the two discreet statues immortalized by Irving gaze yet upon
the niche where the treasure was discovered by the little Sanchica.
Unlike most of the legends to which Moorish fancy has given rise,
this story is substantially true, for three immense jars of finished
workmanship and full of coins and jewels were found here soon after the
Conquest. Two of them were afterwards lost by neglect; the third, the
famous vase of the Alhambra, unique in design, is preserved, though in a
damaged condition, in a room near the Court of the Lions.
Of the numerous suburban villas that offered rest and seclusion to
the princes of Granada, but one, the Generalife, or Garden of the
Architect, now exists. It is situated much higher than the adjoining
fortifications, and, completely commanding the city, was a point of the
greatest strategic importance during the siege. Owned by a descendant of
Boabdil, who has not entirely forgotten the customs of his princely
line, the grounds of the Generalife present not a few of the distinctive
characteristics of Moorish horticulture. Most prominent in the landscape
are the venerable cypresses which have stood here for centuries, and by
the trunk of the largest well-founded tradition says the daring Aben
Hamet whispered words of illicit love in the ears of the frail sultana.
So extensive are the alterations which ignorance and barbarism have made
in the Alhambra that its original plan cannot now be determined. We know
that it contained five grand courts, of which only two remain, and that
of the area enclosed by the outer wall scarce a foot of space was not
occupied by buildings, the latter as late as 1625 affording shelter
to six thousand souls who in that year attempted to turn the palace
into a ribbon-factory. The royal residence was divided into several
departments, each having its _alcalde_, or mayor, who was responsible to
the governor of the fortress. One quarter was assigned to the sultan's
family, another to the religious functionaries and doctors of the law,
another to the garrison. Upon the highest point of the hill were lodged
the _muftis_, or expounders of the Koran, and in the midst of their
dwellings rose the tapering minarets of the great mosque, whose rare
marbles and columns with capitals of massy silver caused it to be justly
regarded as one of the wonders of the Moslem world. Instead of the
coarse tiles whose weight is crushing the galleries, the roofs were
covered with thin plates of porcelain corresponding with the gay mosaics
of the pavements and the walls. The taste of the Oriental was visible
everywhere, in cascades and fountains, in groves where myrtle and
cypress were trimmed in all manner of fantastic shapes,--pyramids,
grottoes, obelisks, stalactitic arches,--in aromatic hedges diffusing
a succession of delicate perfumes, in beds where flowers of glowing
colors traced texts and legends on a ground of brightest green. Seventy
thousand gold ducats--one hundred and forty thousand dollars, equal to
four times that amount at the present day--were expended annually upon
the palace, to which additions were made by each succeeding monarch,
until arrested by the fatal dissensions that heralded the overthrow of
the Saracen power.
No Arab names of the apartments of the Alhambra have come down to us:
those by which they are at present designated are modern and entirely
imaginary. We are even ignorant as to the uses of many rooms, and it
is sometimes difficult to separate the parts of the original structure
from those of later date erected with materials taken from the
demolished winter palace. These mutilations, that, under the pretext
of "improvements," were effected in the reign of Charles V. and his
immediate successors, have rendered a complete restoration impossible.
Enough remains, however, to show the immense progress made by the Moors
in architecture during the latter half of the fourteenth century,
appropriately named the Hispano-Arab age of gold. The changes undergone
by the various orders before the arch peculiar to Granada was developed
are clearly defined and worthy of attention; and not less interesting is
the study of the fragile and elaborate arabesques.
It is remarkable that such magical results were produced by the simplest
means; for Arab ornamentation, far from being as complicated as it
appears, is subject to certain plain geometrical rules. The figures,
which at first sight show but a maze of lines and curves, can be easily
resolved into the square and the circle; the shawls of Cashmere have
afforded the patterns of the intricate floral designs lavished in such
bewildering variety; the stalactitic cornices and domes are modelled
after the sections of a pomegranate divested of its seeds. All the
countries which the armies of Islam had overrun in their wonderful
career seem to have furnished suggestions to the architects of the
Alhambra. The huge stone blocks of the gates, fitted with perfect
accuracy, are copied from the masonry of the Roman, who built for
eternity; the hanging gardens are the gardens of Babylon; the lions that
support the basin in the famous court are Phoenician; the fountain
itself is an imitation of the brazen laver of Solomon, mentioned in the
thirty-fourth _sura_ of the Koran; the _tarkish_, or stucco-work, was
invented at Damascus; the hand of the Persian artist is visible upon the
glittering walls of the Tower of Comares. Nor did the Moor, ever proud
of his origin and tenacious of the prejudices of his race, though
separated hundreds of leagues from the home of his ancestors and
domiciled for centuries in a foreign land, reject the influence of their
traditions in the decoration of his palaces. The lotus of Egypt and the
palm of Arabia are interwoven in the foliage of every fretted hall; the
letters of the Cufic alphabet--singularly adapted to ornament--proclaim
the doctrines of Islam from cornice and capital; while the profusion of
water and verdure proves that the Saracen, though surrounded by the
luxuriant vegetation of the Vega, beheld a grove or a fountain with the
same emotions as did the weary camel-driver when, uttering a prayer of
thanksgiving to Allah, he hailed with delight the refreshing oasis
shining amid the dull gray sands of the desert.
"Quien no ha visto Granada
No ha visto nada,"--[B]