Corral del Carbón
Building · Granada
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The Corral del Carbón is a 14th-century alhóndiga, built under Sultan Yusuf I before 1336 as a grain warehouse and inn for traveling merchants. It is the only funduq surviving from the Nasrid period on the Iberian Peninsula. After the Christian conquest it housed coal merchants, giving it its current name, and later served as a theater and tenement house.
Its original name, al-Funduq al-Jadida, comes from the Arabic al-fondaq, itself borrowed from the Greek pandocheion, meaning welcome to all. Grain was stored and sold on the ground floor, while merchants lodged in galleried rooms on the two floors above. By 1531 the building was already recorded under its present name, after coal traders who weighed and sold their goods here took it over. The State bought the building in 1933 and restored it under Leopoldo Torres Balbás, the architect also responsible for much of the Alhambra's restoration.
What you see
A square courtyard is ringed by three tiers of galleries on brick and stone pillars, centred on a stone basin fed by spouts on either side, with a stone cistern surviving along one wall.
Practical
Entry is free, no reservation needed. Open daily 09:00-20:00 in summer (April to mid-September) and 10:00-18:00 the rest of the year; the courtyard still hosts concerts and theatre.
caravanseraiislamic architecturetheatre historygranada old town
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