À propos de ce lieu
Hidden behind an unassuming door on the Carrera del Darro, El Bañuelo, the Little Bath, is a remarkable survivor: a hammam, or Arab bathhouse, dating from the eleventh century, making it one of the oldest and best-preserved Moorish baths in all of Spain. Public bathing was central to daily life in Al-Andalus, a place not only to wash but to socialise, relax and conduct business, and Granada once had many such baths. El Bañuelo survived where others were destroyed, perhaps because it lay in private hands. Inside, a sequence of brick-vaulted chambers, the cold, warm and hot rooms, is pierced by distinctive star- and octagon-shaped skylights that once let in shafts of daylight and steam. The vaults rest on horseshoe arches supported by a fascinating collection of columns and capitals, some of them salvaged from earlier Roman and Visigothic buildings.
À retenir
- 11 century — The Arab baths date from the eleventh century, among the oldest in Spain
- 1 hammam — The baths follow the classic sequence of cold, warm and hot rooms
- 1 skylights — Star- and octagon-shaped openings in the vaults lit the steamy chambers
📍 Calle Bañuelo 2, 18010, Granada