Granada, the city of the Alhambra Palace and the last Moorish kingdom of Andalucia, has a special place in our imagination, whether we have visited it or not. As well as being a city of exceptional beauty and interest, it is a symbol for all of us of what happens when different civilizations meet. That is why "Granada, City of My Dreams", in the words of the author, was written not only as a guide but as "a book about Granada for the nun in Norway sitting in her armchair and wishing to travel there in the mind".For, what fascinates us about this universal city is not only its monuments but its marvellous story, "the encounter between Moor and Christian, gypsy and Jew, medieval and Renaissance, glistening snow and Mediterranean sun, in this green balcony of Europe overlooking the naked shores of Africa". Lawrence Bohme, poet, illustrator and curious traveller, has filled these pages with luminous descriptions and drawings, the culmination of forty years of wanderings through the palaces and labyrinths of his adopted homeland, Granada.Things about Granada you can find in this book...A history of Granada / Mirador de San Cristóbal and San Miguel Alto / Cathedral quarter / Plaza de Bibarrambla / Mercado de San AgustÃn / chumbos, caracoles and chirimoyas / Corral del Carbón / AlcaicerÃa / Madraza / Royal Chapel / Cathedral / Sagrario / the heroic feat of Hernán del Pulgar / Gran VÃa de Colón / the sons of the sugar beet / Albaicin / The Gate of Paradise / CaldererÃa to San Nicolás / Placeta de Carvajales / Minaret of San José / Plaza de San Miguel Bajo / Palace of King Badis / Cuesta de la Lona / Palace of Dar al-Horra / Convent of Santa Isabel la Real / View from San Nicolás / from San Nicolás to Plaza Larga / from Plaza Larga down Cuesta de la Alhacaba to Puerta de Elvira / Hospital Real / Saint John of God and the Triumph of the Virgin / Plaza Nueva / Casa de Pisa / River Darro and its bridges / El Bañuelo - the Bath / Convents of Zafra and Concepción / Casa de Castril / Paseo de los Tristes / Sacromonte / San Juan de los Reyes / Alhambra / Alhambra Alta / Monastery of San Francisco / Church of Santa MarÃa de la Alhambra and the two monks / Puerta del Vino - Gate of Wine / Alcazaba / Palace of Carlos Quinto / Nasrid Palaces / a brief history of al-Andalus, from the Visigoths to the Catholic Monarchs / Mexuar and its oratory / Cuarto Dorado / Tower of Comares / The Hall of Power / Courtyard of the Lions / Hall of Abencerrajes / Hall of the Kings - Sala de los Reyes / Hall of the Two Sisters / Sala de camas - the Bath / Rooms of Carlos Quinto / Tocador de la Reina - Queen's Dressing Room / Partal, Torre de las Damas and the Mosque / The four towers / Generalife / Hill of the Martyrs / Torres Bermejas / Saint John of the Cross / Casa de Manuel de Falla / Realejo / Campo del PrÃncipe / Church of Santo Domingo / Casa de los Tiros / Vestiges and ghosts of the old Granada / Puerta Real / Palace of BibataubÃn / Plaza del Campillo, Calle Ganivet and the old "Manigua" / Calle Recogidas, and the convent which gave it its name / The uncloistered fountains of San AgustÃn and La Trinidad / Street of the Boards and Street of the Little Bridges / Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo / The Green Bridge and "French Granada" / Ermita de San Sebastián / Alcázar Genil / Puerta de San Lorenzo, the gate that got lost / Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo / Acequia Gorda and Paseo de las Palmas / Epilogue - What became of the Moors of Granada? / some other pieces / Aben Humeya and the War of the Alpujarra / The Queen and the gypsies / The King's Jews / The multiple origins of "marrano" / Moro, mudéjar and morisco.
Lawrence Bohme was born in London in 1942 "under Hitler's rockets", to a refugee from Berlin and "a daring young Englishwoman". In 1946 his family left "grimy, threadbare war-torn England" to settle in Vancouver, where Lawrence's father set up his own business and his mother "discovered she was an artist". When he was 14, Joan took offspring in hand and embarked on a long odyssey as a budding abstract painter, living "not quite hand-to-mouth, but almost" in Mexico, where Lawrence learned Spanish, and then in pre-independence Jamaica "which was an earthly paradise". But life in a British colony was too dull for the adventurous Bohmes and by 1958 - "on the eve of America's cultural revolution" - they were tucked into a tiny flat in New York's Greenwich Village, "which Joan had read about in a newspaper as a good place for bohemians and artists...". There, Lawrence flourished, "making interesting friends of various origins, including - thanks to the Blackboard Jungle sort of high school my mother put me in - a girlfriend who introduced me to Harlem and its fascinating people and music". In 1960 Lawrence fulfilled his dream of studying in Madrid and sailed to Spain, where he "spent more time carousing in taverns with a bunch of anti-Franco students than at the overly staid University". He soon found his way south to Montefrio, the olive-farming town west of Granada where he was to live, later on, for over 20 years. There, Lawrence became the undying friend of the flamenco singer Manuel Avila, "who was also a shepherd and village butcher". In 1961, giving up on the Spanish University, Lawrence - now with a temperamental Bavarian painter in tow, the footloose tomboy Lilo - set out for Paris and the Sorbonne, where he studied French civilization and discovered his beloved poets Baudelaire and Villon. Finally, in 1963 and "a bachelor again, I hitched a ride to Rome planning to work in a hotel, but instead ended up in Sicily trying to teach English to fishermen's kids in exchange for sardines and spaghetti." He failed, but "found all that and much more later on" in a favela of Rio de Janeiro where he stayed "for five blissful years". After a decade working as a pen-and-ink postcard designer and leather sandal-maker in Haiti and other Caribbean islands, Lawrence returned to Paris at age 41 to become a quadrilingual Unesco translator. Now retired, the ex-nomad lives in southern France "writing all this down" in his ongoing 16-part memoir, "My Very Long Youth."
