December’s Museum Piece of the Month is a glass perfume bottle and the role of perfume in Nasrid Granada. Every Saturday in November, from noon onwards, art historian Montserrat Morillas will analyse the subject in Room VII of the Museum of the Alhambra, as part of a free programme offered by Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife (PAG).

Pieces like this glass perfume bottle reveal the great importance of ointments, oils and perfumes in Muslim society in Spain. Both for everyday and for special occasions, a huge range of scents and aromas perfumed all public, private and religious spaces. Perfumes were used by both men and women and among all social classes.

Perfumes were made mainly from lemon, rose, violet, amber and musk, among other ingredients, and varied depending on the time of year, mood or the occasion for which they were worn. The importance of scents was such that they were discussed in treatises on nutrition, hygiene and medicine.

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From the gallery that divides the Court of the Grated Window (Patio de la Reja) and the Court of Lindaraja (Patio de Lindaraja) there is access to the ground floor of Comares Baths (Baño de Comares). The original entrance, however, was located higher, at the level of the Court of the Myrtles (Patio de los Arrayanes) connecting it to the Hall of the Beds.

The function of this space in Comares Baths is similar to that of the apoditerium in the Roman baths. It was a place for relaxation and body care before taking the bath, illuminated with a top lantern around which the cloakrooms distributed on the upper floor. The lively colours of the hall are not the original ones but belong to a restoration work performed in the second half of the 19th century.

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