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In the case of Granada, the Alhambra and the Generalife, it's simply not possible to deny the founders and builders the clearest imaginable eyesight. And up on the Cerro del Sol, Sun Hill, the site of the Generalife, the eye is king. We arrived in the early morning, too late to properly imagine ourselves bathed in the hushed nocturnal magic of de Falla's En el Generalife, but perhaps not quite too late to bring to mind the opening lines of the Rubáiyát.

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Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

There was warmth in the still air, but none of the ferocious heat that would arrive later towards midday, to coincide with the arrival of coaches of tourists from hotels all over the province. This timing meant too that we had the gardens more or less to ourselves, allowing us to wander at leisure.

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What pleasure is to be found in that mild stillness! Here are citruses and oleanders, yews, cypresses, ivies and orange trees, arranged in seemingly artless profusion within a jewel box of structured marvels - the Paseo de las Adelfas (Avenue of Oleanders), for instance, or the Paseo de los Cipreses (Avenue of Cypresses).

Everywhere there is the splash of water: in the pool of the Jardines Nuevos (New Gardens), in the world-famous Patio de la Acequia with its water-lilies, fountains and arches, and most enchantingly of all (in my view) on the Escalera del Agua (Water Staircase) with its vault of laurel trees.

But even before you begin to climb to the Jardines Altos (Upper or High Gardens) - on a higher level than the Generalife Palace itself and prolific with magnolias, firs, cypresses and aromatics such as myrtles, jasmines and roses - the eye cannot help but detach itself from its immediate surroundings. This must be one of the world's most glorious horizons - it includes in its three hundred and sixty degrees the gardens themselves and their hillsides; the Generalife Palace; the Alhambra; the city of Granada and in particular the Albaicín; what I take to be the beginning of the Vega over on the far edge of the city; and not least of all the spectacular backdrop of the Sierra Nevada.

With every step you take, the kaleidoscope turns, the perspective alters, the view changes - the more so the higher you climb. This is a space shaped by a multi-faceted intelligence with a genius for faith, the physical beauty of the natural world, harmony, space, horticulture, architecture, mathematics - and war. The celebrity of the sights suggests permanence, as do the massive walls of the Alhambra, survivors of time, negligence and shocking napoleonic destructiveness: the rapid, mercurial changes in vista and vision, on the other hand, and the omnipresence of water suggest impermanence. Two more strophes of the Rubáiyát come to mind (again in Fitzgerald's translation).

Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai
Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his Hour or two, and went his way.


For in and out, above, about, below,
'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.