Corral del Carbón

Before you stands a unique building: the only Nasrid alhóndiga, or merchants’ inn, to have survived intact in the Iberian Peninsula. It was built before 1336 and was called al-Funduq al-Yadida, the New Inn.

1Inn, warehouse and market

An alhóndiga was at once a hotel for merchants, a warehouse and a wholesale market. Traders arrived with their goods, left animals and bales on the ground floor and slept in the rooms on the upper floors, which look onto a galleried courtyard. The location was perfect: next to the Alcaicería, the souk and the great mosque, and linked by a small bridge to the other bank of the Darro, which then flowed in the open.

The gateway, with its great arch and the muqarnas vault of the entrance hall, follows Eastern models and is related to the Alhambra’s Gate of Justice. An Arabic inscription in Kufic script runs above the arch.

2From comedies to coal

In 1494 the Catholic Monarchs granted it to Sancho de Arana. On his death it was auctioned off and served as an inn for charcoal sellers, hence its present name. Until 1593 it also worked as a corral de comedias, an open-air playhouse, and later as a tenement house. It was threatened with demolition until the State bought it in 1933 and Leopoldo Torres Balbás restored it.

Today it houses the headquarters of the Granada International Festival of Music and Dance and, now and then, concerts and plays in its courtyard.

3What to look for

• The muqarnas vault of the entrance hall, with traces of colour.
• The double window above the arch.
• The stone basin with two spouts, in the middle of the courtyard.