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El Bañuelo is located on Carrera del Darro, just past the Puente de Espinosa (Espinosa Bridge), at the point where the old Puerta de los Tableros once stood. It's the best-preserved Arab bathhouse (hammam) in all of Spain and one of the oldest monuments in Granada: it dates from the 11th century, from the time of the Zirid kingdom, even earlier than the Alhambra.
In Al-Andalus, public baths were essential spaces in everyday life, both for hygiene and for social and spiritual life. Besides personal cleanliness, they played an important role as places to meet and talk, and they were also used for ritual purification (ablutions) before prayer.
El Bañuelo was divided into several rooms following the Roman and Byzantine model that the Arabs adopted and refined: a cold room, a warm room and a hot room. It has a rectangular layout, with vaults pierced by star-shaped skylights that let in light and allowed the space to be ventilated.
The decoration is sober but elegant, with horseshoe arches and columns reused from earlier periods, both Roman and Visigothic. The heating system was based on a hypocaust: heat circulated beneath the floor and through ducts in the walls, the same principle used in Roman baths.
El Bañuelo is one of the few buildings of its kind to survive the destruction that befell other Arab baths after 1492, since among Christians they had a reputation on a par with brothels. The building did survive, but at the cost of its original function: a private house was built on top of it almost as soon as the city was conquered.
During winter hours (15 September to 30 April) it's open Monday to Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm. During summer hours (1 May to 14 September) it's open Monday to Sunday from 9 am to 2:30 pm and 5 pm to 8:30 pm. It remains closed on 25 December and 1 January.
You can't buy a ticket for El Bañuelo alone: entry is included in the Andalusi Monuments ticket (€7), which also covers the Palacio de Dar al-Horra, the Maristán and the Casa Horno de Oro, or in the Dobla de Oro ticket (which additionally includes the Alhambra, the Casa del Chapiz, the Casa de Zafra and the Cuarto Real de Santo Domingo). Tickets are bought through the website of the Alhambra and Generalife Trust, and on Sundays entry to these monuments is free.
El Bañuelo is on Carrera del Darro, the street that climbs from Plaza Nueva towards the Albaicín and Sacromonte alongside the Darro river. Right opposite, close by, are the remains of the Puerta de los Tableros, and a little further along you'll find the Maristán (a former 14th-century Nasrid hospital) and the Casa de Castril, home to the Granada Archaeological Museum.
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