Dénia's 1,000-year-old inns revealed

News Staff Reporter DÉNIA'S tradition as a holiday town with an extensive network of hotels is at least 1,000 years old, according to local historians – its luxury inns still exist and are part of the Marina Alta's ancient heritage.

So far, the remains of seven fanadiq, or medieval guest houses, have been found in the town – more than in anywhere else in the country.

During the Moorish era, when Dénia was known as 'Daniyya', Muslims on pilgrimage to Mecca – something Islam requires its followers to do at least once in a lifetime unless they are physically unable or cannot afford to – would head to what is now the Marina Alta coast to catch a boat across the Mediterranean.

They would stay in a funduq in Dénia overnight to break the journey.

Also, in the 11th and 12th centuries, traders exporting wine, raisins, almonds and minerals would stay the night in 'Daniyya' before loading up the ships.

The fanadiq – the word for funduq, or 'inn', in the plural – were élite and sumptuous and the accommodation of choice for powerful and wealthy visitors.

According to town archaeologist Josep A. Gisbert, the last 30 years' worth of excavations in the town have uncovered at least the foundations and courtyards of seven fanadiq which pre-date even the one in Granada, known now as the Casa del

Corral – mostly intact and built in the 14th century.

During a seminar this week in Murcia on fanadiq on the east coast, Gisbert and archaeologist Silvia Ruiz – who have excavated and studied some of these Islamic inns – explained that they were all built close to mosques and a hammam, or public steam baths, with a well or canal to supply the guest houses with water, and two storeys, the ground floor for storing merchandise and the first floor for rooms.

The largest and best-preserved were found in the grounds of the Maristas primary school between C/ La Mar and the Marqués de Campo boulevard, and on the latter two streets themselves.

Plans are in the pipeline to turn the complexes into visitor attractions and put the artefacts and building parts of those that have almost vanished on display in the local history museum.