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Calle Almanzor and the Araujo family
Calle Almanzor lies in the heart of the old Jewish Quarter of Córdoba. It takes its name from Al-Mansur, the military leader who ruled Al-Andalus in the name of Caliph Hisham II at the end of the 10th century. It is a narrow, cobbled street, flanked by whitewashed walls that give no hint of what lies behind them.
José Araujo’s father was a muleteer on the Guadalquivir. He went down to the river to extract sand for construction — hard work, with long days, that in those years employed entire families in Córdoba. The Araujos’ life revolved around those routines: the river, the city, the labours of each day.
A cast-iron vessel
Around 1930, Don José Araujo, a resident of this town, discovered together with one of his brothers a cast-iron vessel full of old coins while going about their daily work. It was no coincidence: in a city like Córdoba, where every inch of land has been inhabited ground for two thousand years, accidental finds are part of urban history.
The extraordinary part was what came next.
From the coins to the house
With the sale of those coins, the Araujo family acquired several properties in Córdoba. One of them was this house at Calle Almanzor 18 — the very one where the Arab Baths and our Guesthouse stand today.
The brothers lived here for decades. Each with his own independent dwelling, sharing the patio and the well, like so many traditional houses in Córdoba’s historic centre. The typical structure of the old Córdoba house: several family units around a single patio, shared water from the cistern, public life at the centre and private life in the rooms facing the patio.
A house built on water
The coins were a clue. But the real proof of what lay beneath the house came later, during the restoration of the building itself. The archaeological excavations confirmed the existence of 15th-century public baths linked to the Henestrosa family — those baths that survived the ban of the Catholic Monarchs by transforming into other things.
And before that, much earlier: the Romans. In an adjoining dwelling, while building some garages, hydraulic structures appeared that archaeologists linked to Roman baths from the 1st century, possibly extending into this very plot. The house the Araujos bought in the 1930s was built on two thousand years of water history.
The extraordinary thing is not that coins or structures appeared. In the historic centre of Córdoba, digging a metre below the ground is travelling in time. The extraordinary thing is the continuity. This place was not a house that happened to have remains beneath it. It was a place of water from the 1st century onwards that kept transforming with every civilisation that passed through Córdoba: Roman baths, 15th-century public baths, an inn over the centuries, the Araujo family home, and finally — closing the circle — Arab baths and a guesthouse once again.
Today
In the mid-2000s, the house came into our hands. We were lucky enough to speak with José in person — the boy who had found the coins, by then an old man — and to hear him tell us, in his own words, this whole story. Without that conversation, this page would not exist.
Five years later, in 2011, we opened the Arab Baths of Córdoba. When you cross the door and go down to the water area, you walk on two thousand years of history. It is not a metaphor — it is urban geology. Each layer of the subsoil corresponds to an era, a culture, a way of understanding water and the care of the body.
The Romans built the first baths here because the site had the right conditions. The 15th-century public baths continued the tradition. The building worked as an inn, welcoming travellers — something we have now recovered with the guesthouse. The Araujo family lived here for decades. And we, since 2011, keep heating the water and opening the door every morning.
We did not choose this place. The place chose us. Spending two thousand years devoted to water is something that cannot be manufactured or bought. It can only be continued.