Caliphal Baths

The complex was contiguous to the former Caliphal Palaces of the Umayyads (now the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos), whose inhabitants it served.

Their layout and function was modeled on the Roman bathhouses which preceded them and which had already been part of urban life in the region for generations.

During this period the Alcazar (royal palace) still served as the governor's residence in the city, and a reception hall was added to the bath complex, still present in the reconstructed remains today.

The Almohads constructed another bathhouse attached to the original caliphal complex, sharing some of the same facilities but with a new sequence of cold to hot rooms.

[1][3] Following the Christian conquest of the city by Ferdinand III in 1236, he donated one part of the Alcazar to the bishop of Cordoba (today the Episcopal Palace) while the rest continued to be used as a royal residence.

[3][1] A century later, in 1328, King Alfonso XI decided to build a new set of baths within the royal palace for his favourite mistress, Leonor de Guzmán, which can still be seen today in the Christian Alcazar.

It's possible that at this time parts of the bathhouse's masonry, especially the vaulted ceilings, was reused for the construction of the Church of San Pedro de Alcántara to the north.

At this point they were studied by Spanish historian Rafael Ramírez de Arellano, who dated them back to al-Hakam II's reign.

[13] The smaller hot room to the west was a rectangular space covered by a barrel vault and marked at either end by a column between two horseshoe arches.

On the west side of this, behind a marble lattice wall, was the service area of the baths which was set lower than the other rooms and contained the furnaces.