Restos Arqueológicos del Maristán
Ruins · Granada
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These ruins mark the Maristán, a hospital founded in 1367 by Sultan Muhammad V beside the Darro river, the only documented hospital of Islamic tradition on the Iberian Peninsula. Built on two floors with about 50 rooms, it treated the poor and later the mentally ill. After Nasrid rule it became a mint, then a wine store and prison, before near-demolition in the mid-19th century.
The hospital stood in the Axares quarter, named for the irrigation channel that watered this aristocratic district of Nasrid Granada. After the Reconquista, Mercedarian friars ran the building as a wine cellar into the 18th century, one stop in a long run of secular uses before its 19th-century ruin. Archaeological conservation has been underway on the site since 2017, with the long-term aim of turning it into a museum of medieval medicine that uses the building itself to frame the remains. It reopened to visitors after the first phase of that restoration was completed.
What you see
Brick pillars and the outline of arcaded galleries surround the excavated courtyard where the hospital's fountain once stood.
Practical
Open to visitors following the first phase of restoration completed in 2022; a second phase of excavation and restoration is still to come.
islamic heritagehospital historyalbaicinarchaeological ruins