Alhambra Palace's Mathematical Secret

The Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain, features stunning Islamic architecture and was built by Muslim rulers in the 13th and 14th centuries. The palace's Islamic mosaics display a near-perfect understanding of mathematical logic and 16 of the 17 types of symmetry identified by modern mathematicians, making them not just beautiful but mathematically rigorous as well. These patterns explore the fundamental characteristics of symmetry in a surprisingly complete way, and it's interesting to note that mathematicians didn't come up with their analysis of symmetry principles until centuries after the tiles of the Alhambra had been set in place.