Ris­ing above the mod­ern low­er town, the Alham­bra and the Albaycin, sit­u­at­ed on two adja­cent hills, form the medieval part of Grana­da. To the east of the Alham­bra fortress and res­i­dence are the mag­nif­i­cent gar­dens of the Gen­er­al­ife, the for­mer rur­al res­i­dence of the emirs who ruled this part of Spain in the 13th and 14th cen­turies. The res­i­den­tial dis­trict of the Albaycin is a rich repos­i­to­ry of Moor­ish ver­nac­u­lar archi­tec­ture, into which the tra­di­tion­al Andalu­sian archi­tec­ture blends har­mo­nious­ly.