ABSTRACT
The original house of the Hospitallers in Acre had been situated close to the cathedral of the Holy Cross, east of the present line of the Ottoman walls. This chapter aims to ask whether more can be deduced about the Hospital’s lay-out from historical materials, including charters relating to Acre, the maps ascribed to Paolino Veneto and Pietro Vesconte, the decisions of the Hospitaller chapters-general which met between 1206 and 1288, the Esgarts and the Usances. In the 1190s the Hospital must also have been faced by the questions whether Jerusalem would be recovered and, if it was, whether the headquarters should be moved back to their original site south of the church of the Holy Sepulchre. In Jerusalem before 1187 the Hospitallers had had a subsidiary German hospital near the Temple, a pilgrim hospice and stables beyond the northern wall and their own cemetery to the south, overlooking the Hinnom valley.
