Lost Paradise

Lost Paradise tells the history of Granada as a city repeatedly remade by conquest, migration and memory. Drayson begins with the Roman and Visigothic settlements of the region, follows the Jewish and Muslim communities that shaped medieval Granada, and gives particular attention to the Zirid city, the Nasrid emirate and the creation of the Alhambra before the Catholic Monarchs took possession in 1492.

The narrative continues through Christian rebuilding, the coercion and expulsion of Moriscos, the Sacromonte discoveries, modern war, dictatorship and the city’s transformation into an international destination. Rather than treating “lost paradise” as a single vanished golden age, the book examines how successive inhabitants and visitors have used Granada’s architecture and layered past to construct competing identities.