Ancient Hospital Complex

9th-century monastic hospital — one of the oldest in the world

At the foot of the hill, just across from the museum, are the carefully exposed ruins of what was a fully functioning monastic hospital, in use by the 9th century AD if not earlier. The site preserves the foundations of the wards, the consulting rooms, the inscribed stone medicine trough (a stone basin shaped to a body, into which patients were lowered for oil-bathing treatment), and a stone formulary of medicines.

Free; takes about twenty minutes to walk round. Often skipped by visitors who go straight to the climb.

things to do sight
A story
An inscribed slab found here lists the staff of the hospital, the rations they were paid, and the daily routine. It is one of the earliest detailed records of a hospital anywhere in the world — and it is unambiguously a hospital, not a clinic or apothecary, with named wards and a chief physician.

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