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Siena’s ghetto was created at the same time as that of Florence in 1571. The large Jewish presence in the city is verified by documents from the beginning of the thirteenth century that mention a universita iudarum. The Jewish quarter is in the heart of the city, near the Piazza Campo and between the present-day Via San Martino and Via di Salicotto. The narrow little streets and tall ...
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Located at the extreme south of Tuscany among the hills and cypresses, the borough of Pitigliano rises from a rocky pinnacle. Once called “little Jerusalem” by Tuscan Jews, the nickname points to the historical importance of Pitigliano’s Jewish community here, formed by those fleeing the Papal States after the edicts of 1555. The Jews remained here for almost four ...
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The former ghetto of Florence was located in the heart of the old city center near the market in a zone totally destroyed and the end of the twentieth century, situated today between Via Brunelleschi, the Piazza della Repubblica, and Via Roma. Bernardo Buontalento, the grand duke’s architect, was commissioned to design the ghetto. The streets accessing the residential blocks were ...
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With cities like Livorno and Florence, Tuscany represents an important part of the history of Jewish life in Italy, although evidence of the longstanding Jewish presence here is less abundant than in Venice and Piedmont. The large free port city of Livorno was the largest Jewish city of Italy between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The powerful Spanish-Portuguese community had what ...
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The Jews in the capital of Italy are perhaps the oldest Romans of all. They have settled in the same ancient neighborhoods in the heart of the Eternal City for 2000 years, making their homes in the former ghetto, in Trastevere, and on both sides of the Tiber River where it is crossed by the Ponte Fabricio or Ponte Quattro Capi. Not only one of the oldest communities of the peninsula, Roman ...
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Capital of the Algarve region in southern Portugal, the city of Faro was home to a large Jewish community, expelled in 1497. A number of them continued to live there as conversos. Jews did not resettle “officially” in the city until the 19th century. In the fifteenth century, the time of its peak, Faro was a well-known center of Hebrew printing. In 1481, Samuel Porteira printed ...
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If Jews had to flee the city in the 16th century, Lisbon was also the city that welcomed Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition or the transit of Jews fleeing Nazism to the American continent. But since the turn of the 21st century it has been experiencing a renaissance of its Jewish life. In December 2024, a ceremony was held in Lisbon in memory of the boat Serpa Pinto, which transported many ...
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The Jews who lived within the walls of the little hilltop town of Castelo de Vide were engaged in the traditional activities of commerce, crafts, and sometimes medicine. The population grew after 1492 with the arrival of Jews from Spain. The former Judaria is fairly easy to identify around the (Praço de Comércio). Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the characteristic little ...
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Although there was an organized community in Tomar at the turn of the fourteenth century, indicated by the inscription on the tombstone of Rabbi Joseph of Tomar, who died in Faro in 1315, it was not until 1430 that the Jews of Tomar had the means to undertake the construction of the synagogue. A building that still stands today. It was completed in 1460. After the expulsion of 1496, the ...
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The little community of Belmonte of between 100 and 300 souls was “discovered” in 1920 by the engineer Samuel Schwarz. Its existence was revealed to the world by Frédéric Brenner’s short film The Last Marranos in 1990. The Jews of Belmonte are one of the last groups bearing witness to the precarious life of Jews hunted by an all-powerful Inquisition and Church. They lived ...
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Porto is the capital of northern Portugal. It is the country’s second largest city after Lisbon. It is best known for its historic monuments and its wine. The Jewish presence dates back to the Middle Ages. The oldest Jewish quarter was located within the walls of the old city, where the Rua de Santa Ana is today, close to the Romanesque cathedral. In 1386, Dom Joao I granted land to the ...
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Although the Judería in Hervás was small, a local proverb that “in Hervás there are many Jews” made the quarter famous. It stood close to the Ambroz River near the town’s exit. The and are the most picturesque, with a fine fountain dedicated to Jewish-Christian friendship and two-story brick and chestnut-wood houses with many flowers. Local bakers continue to make an ...
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The community of Trujillo is first mentioned in 1290. Just before the expulsion, it had 150 members. All of them went to Portugal. Not long ago, construction in the back of a pharmacy brought to light the site of an old synagogue. An inscription from Psalms (118-20) reads: “This door is the door of the Lord: the Just will enter through here”. The adjoining house has two vaulted ...
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Cáceres had a fairly sizable Jewish presence after the Christian reconquest. In 1479, 100 married Jews were listed in a community with some 650 members. They lived in two juderías: the “old” one was on the site of today’s Casa de las Veletas, and the “new” one was around Plaza Mayor, where the Jews had most of their shops. is probably an old synagogue that was ...
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It is likely the history of Spain’s Jews began in Estremadura. Vestiges from the third century bear witness to them, and, according to the twelfth-century chronicler Abraham ibn Daud, the Jews that Titus deported from Jerusalem settled in this old Roman province. However, as elsewhere, there are few traces left to indicate this long presence.
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The call is clearly defined by a small square and the Carrer de la Call. It is one of Spain’s most important for the quality and richness of its houses, even if urban development work has done away with the smaller streets and blind alleys. The location of its four gates is known, but not that of its many synagogues. is traditionally the preserve of the chuetas, a community of silver ...
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There have been Jews in the Balearic Islands since the Roman occupation. After Jaume I won the islands from the Arabs, many Jews arrived from Catalonia but also the south of France and North Africa to settle the new land. After 1343, when Pedro IV of Aragón seized the islands, the Balearic Jews began to enjoy a real golden age. The leading families traded throughout the Mediterranean and with ...
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Teruel became important as the supply center for Catalan-Aragónese troops sent out to conquer Valencia. The Jews here became specialized in weaving wool. The Lonja, or produce exchange, was open to both Jewish and Muslim traders. The local museum (Museo Provincial) has an interesting Hanukkah lamp made in the local green ceramic. Discovered in 1977 during an excavation in the old Jewish ...
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In the Middle Ages, the powerful kingdom of Aragón comprised not only of Aragón itself but Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands. It was home to numerous Jewish communities, especially after the union with Catalonia in 1150. They had links with the Muslims, who lived here around 1500.
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Tortosa was home to one of the peninsula’s oldest communities, as attested by a seventh-century headstone discovered in the nineteenth century and now on display in the cathedral cloister. Its incription is in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek and features two stars of David and a candelabra. The community thrived under Arab rule, with its illustrious sons including the grammarian Menahem ben ...
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Standing on the trading route between Lérida and Tarragona, Valls had a thriving little community that was, however, annihilated in the pogroms of 1391. One can nonetheless visit the call, which has kept almost entirely intact its original structure and some of the old names of its streets (Carrer dels Jueus and Carrer du Call). At number 18A on the the patio could well have belonged to the ...
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The call major, which was active between the twelfth century and the riots of 1391, is Spain’s best-preserved Jewish quarter and the easiest to visit. It comprises a small zone between the Palau de la Generalitat and the calles Banys Nous, Sant Domenec del Call, Sant Honorat, Arc de Sant Ramon del Call, Sant Sever, la Fruita, Marlet, and del Call. The synagogue was at 7 Calle de Sant ...
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The presence of Jews in Besalú is attested in a document from 1229 in which Jaume I the Conqueror reserves to them the function of moneylender. In 1342, the community, hitherto linked to the one in Barcelona, became independent. In those days it numbered 200, a quarter of the total population, and lived side by side with the Christians. We have no information about 1391 and the pogroms. Not ...
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Gerona was the second most important community in Catalonia, both for its size (1000 men and women in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but only 100 or so in the fifteenth) and for the quality of its scholars. Gerona was the home of Nahmanides, Johan ben Abraham Gerondi, Azriel of Gerona, Bonastruc da Porta, and Isaac the Blind. Gerona’s Jewish history has been famous since 1980, ...
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In the fourteenth century, and up to 1492, there was a large community in Castelló d’Empúries living around the Plaza Llana, in the calles de la Judería, del San Padre, and Peixetiries Velles. There are two known cemetery sites. A tombstone found in one of them can be seen in the local museum (Museo Parroquial), while seven others have been reused in various constructions.
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The Jews settled in Catalonia in Roman times, and communities began to take shape in Barcelona and Gerona in the tenth century. By the twelfth century, there were five major Jewish centers: Barcelona, Gerona, Lerida, Tortosa, and Perpignan (French Catalonia). The Jews are mentioned in Catalonia’s first legal code, Els Usatges de la Cort de Barcelona. They distinguished themselves in ...
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In the fifteenth century some 15% of Tudela’s population were Jews. There were two quarters, one around the Zaragaza gate, the other within the castle walls, but nothing remains of these sizable communities. Visitors can, however, go to the at the confluence of the Ebro and Merchando, where Benjamin de Tudela set off on his long journey. The journey which enabled researchers ...
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The town of Vitoria had 300 Jews in 1290 and 900 on the eve of the expulsion -the equivalent of 6 or 7% of the total population. Their main activities were tax collecting and medicine. In 1492 they took refuge in Bayonne across the French border, where, even today, the Jews think of themselves as the descendants of those in Vitoria. The most surprising vestige of the Jewish presence is the ...
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Probably the most interesting judería in Galicia, Ribadavia has kept its old Jewish quarter despite later urban developments. Although it is known Jews were there as far back as the tenth century, few documents about the life of their community remain. The old synagogue is the building with crests on its facade in the , which runs between the Plaza Mayor and Plaza de la Madalena. In ...
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The historical province of Navarre, straddling the Spanish-French border, was violently disputed by the Castilians and counts of Champagne. It was also where Jews from Arab Spain came together with those of Castile and France to take advantage of the famous pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela and thus contribute to its commercial prosperity. The important center of Nájera gave its name ...
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