El Bañuelo are historic Arab public baths in Granada that date to the 11th Century.
The Bañuelo are now located beneath a nondescript house along the Carrera del Darro. From inside the house’s central courtyard we entered the baths themselves through a low door.
One of the most distinctive features of the baths are the octagonal and star-shaped window openings in the arched ceilings. Now sealed with glass, in the past these would have been open to allow light to enter and steam to escape.
The baths consist of three separate rooms — the cool room, the central room, and the hot room. Visitors would move through them one at a time.
In a time before people had running water in their homes, these baths — with separate hours for men and women — were a public facility and also a community meeting point.
In each room, the museum had set up tablets that showed in three dimensions what the room would have looked like in its prime. Josie took a photo of one of the tablets that shows how the hot room would have looked, in comparison to today.
A small dark nook near the entrance had one single star-shaped opening in its ceiling.
