El Maristán de Granada

This guide to El Maristan de Granada, a ruined fourteenth-century hospital in the lower Albaicin, follows the sultan who built it, Muhammad the Fifth, and the doctors who treated mental illness with carefully measured meals, music, poetry and the sound of running water. It traces the marble foundation stone that still survives despite the collapse of the building around it, and the carved lions that once fed a courtyard fountain behind two stories of patient rooms. Look for the doorway and stone that still mark where the courtyard once stood.