Mirador (architecture)

In an architectural context, the term can refer to a tower, balcony, window, or other feature that offers wide views.

[1][2] The term is often applied to Moorish architecture, especially Nasrid architecture, to refer to an elevated room or platform that projects outwards from the rest of a building and offers 180-degree views through windows on three sides.

[3]: 248 [4][5] In Moorish architecture the mirador is typically situated on the perimeter of a building and is aligned with its central axis.

[6][1] It is particularly characteristic of Nasrid architecture in al-Andalus (late 13th to 15th centuries), most notably in the palaces of the Alhambra.

[7][3]: 249  Scholar Arnold Felix traces the development of this feature to the combination of two pre-existing features in the architecture of al-Andalus and western North Africa: halls with views over gardens in earlier Moorish architecture, such as the 10th-century example of ar-Rummāniya (a palatial country estate outside Umayyad Cordoba), and rooms projecting from the edge or rear of fortified palaces, such as in the 11th-century Castle of Monteagudo (near Murcia) and Qal'at Bani Hammad (in Algeria).