The Magdalena hermitage occupies the mountain of the same name, which rises above Castelló. The hermitage originated in the 13th century, following the Christian conquest of 1233. The first documentary reference to a penitential procession that reached the hermitage of Castell Vell dates from 1375, when the city was suffering from a black plague epidemic. Nothing has been preserved from that primitive hermitage, not even the memory of its exact location.

Construction of the current hermitage began in 1451, a work by a friar from the Monastery of Santes Creus popularly known as the frare barbut, whose real name was Antoni. He made use of an ancient cistern of large proportions excavated in the rock and built a structure organised in two parallel naves separated by rudimentary arches, covered with barrel vault. The entrance portico, with a round arch of regular voussoirs, was added in 1455, and the chapel was built in 1456. Between that date and 1590, various works of reform and enlargement took place: the high altar was given a wooden altarpiece and the stables were rebuilt for the service of pilgrims. The definitive form that the ensemble presents today—hermitage-hospice with an adjoining tower acting as a bell tower—was established in 1758 by Vicente Pellicer.

As a destination for supplications and pilgrimages during the Middle Ages and in later periods, the hermitage had kitchens, a dining room, cisterns and a hospice, which the Consell Municipal—owner of the house and hermitage of Santa Magdalena—regularly reconstructed and reformed. Next to the hermitage are the remains of the castle, of which a section of wall and two calicanto walls are preserved. Juan Bautista Balbás, in his Libro de la Provincia de Castellón of 1892, documented the discovery in the lower strata of the Castell Vell of column bases, coins and Roman tombs; later excavations brought to light tegulae used in burials and fragments of samian pottery.

The ensemble was declared a Site of Cultural Interest in 1996.