Hospital Real, Granada

This guide to the Hospital Real in Granada begins with Juan de Dios, locked for the better part of a year around 1540 in a stone cell built into the hospital's asylum ward, after the city decided a reformed book peddler weeping in the streets must be mad. It traces why the Catholic Monarchs raised this Renaissance-Gothic hospital on a former Muslim cemetery just after conquering Granada, building it as a Greek cross with separate wings for the sick, pilgrims and the insane. Its four courtyards still mix Gothic vaults, Mudejar roofs and Renaissance arches added across more than a century of building.