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The small synagogue of Mondovi is a jewel of Piedmontese Baroque architecture, more harmonious overall than that of the nearby administrative center Cuneo. A balustrade surrounds the octagonal-carved wooden bimah in the center of the hall. Illuminated by five large crystal lamps, the right wall is decorated with fourteen trompe l’oeil windows crowned with Hebrew verses that face the ...
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In the small town of Cherasco, in the province of Cuneo, you can make an appointment to visit a very interesting synagogue on private property. Hardly bigger than a living room, the synagogue features magnificent woodwork and gilding. A plaque at the entrance commemorates the founding of the synagogue in 1797. The baroque tevah in the room’s center is made of polychrome wood. The aron ...
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Saluzzo’s small Jewish quarter maintains its former appearance in the area around Via Deportati Ebrei. In one of the courtyards on this street stands a building containing a synagogue on its third floor. Constructed in the eighteenth century and remodeled in 1832, the prayer hall was designed to accommodate more than 300 persons. Notice the beautiful carved door, as well as the gilt ...
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The most elegant of the region’s Baroque synagogues is found in the little city of Carmagnola near Turin. The city’s Jewish community was forced to live in a ghetto beginning in 1724. The temple is on the second floor of an eighteenth-century house opposite the former entrance to the ghetto. Passing through a vestibule decorated with frescoes, you will enter a prayer hall almost ...
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Turin, the capital of Piedmont, is a good point of departure for visiting other Jewish places of remembrance in the region. Turin was first the capital of the Duchy de Savoy, then of the Kingdom of Sardinia. The Jewish presence was recorded by the Bishop Maximus of Turin as early as the fourth century. The only trace of Jewish presence to have been recorded then on only appeared a thousand ...
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Unjustly slighted as a tourist destination, Piedmont is one of the richest regions of Jewish heritage in Italy, with magnificent small Baroque synagogues like those of Carmagnola, Casale Monferrato, Cherasco, Mondovi, and Saluzzo. In 1848, the Piedmontese Jews became the first in Italy to definitively obtain full equality. The main restrictions on their residence or authorized economic ...
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Modena has the great merit of being known for quite different monuments. Architectural and religious monuments, as in many Italian cities, and gastronomic masterpieces such as its famous vinegar. But there are also contemporary monuments that you can take the time to admire when they’re not speeding past you, the Ferraris and other Lamborghinis and Maseratis built in the region… ...
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Ferrara, a sublime city with a medieval centre listed as a World Heritage Site, does not appear to be a vast, museum-like enclosure encircled by a city. On the contrary, its historic centre is delicately interlaced with long, beautiful streets leading to monuments and a gentle way of life that is far from fleeting and to which its inhabitants cling, as did, despite everything, the characters ...
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Bologna is famous for having been one of Europe’s leading cities in the Middle Ages. Thanks to its large population living within its walls, the wealth of local agriculture, the development of trade with the other cities of Emilia-Romagna, but also and perhaps above all to the dynamism provided by its university, the oldest in Europe. History of the Jews of Bologna The first traces of a ...
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The rich region of Emilia-Romagna is definitely worth a week visit. Located on the south of the floodplain of the Po River, it includes cities like Bologna, home to a museum that is a model of modern installation techniques and location of the ruins of an ancient ghetto in the heart of the city, and above all, Ferrara, once a very important center of Italian Judaism. A leisurely tour of the ...
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The old Jewish community of Pisa grew with the arrival of Jews from Spain at the beginning of the sixteenth century, but, with the development of Livorno, steadily decreased in numbers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The current synagogue, constructed in 1756, has been remodeled several times, most notably at the end of the nineteenth century.
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A visit to Livorno is required in the name of remembrance, even if the urban renewal projects of the early twentieth century around the port and the bombings of the Second World War in 1943-1944 have destroyed most of the old city center, including Jewish Livorno’s Grand Synagogue. In no other Italian city did the Jews have such a significant role as in Livorno, where they were never ...
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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. On one side there is the sea and on the other the river. Frequent trips, recent returns, telling a ...
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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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Seville’s Santa Cruz quarter, protected by the Alcazar, was formerly the city’s famous judería. If the English like to dine early compared to the French, they enjoy this meal at Spanish lunchtime. Which continues from tapas to tapas throughout the afternoon. Yes, it’s a bit of a cliché, but that’s the impression you’ll get as you walk through the old quarters of ...
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Homeland of Maimonides, Cordoba was under the Arab Caliphate of Abderahman III the greatest Andalusian juderia. Under the Muslim rule, the Jewish community lived in harmony with the conquerors, who, to save their armies, entrusted to the Jews the administration of Seville and Cordoba. The history of the Jewish community of Cordoba follows that of the Arab occupation and Almohad and Almoravid ...
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Famed in the eleventh century for the influence of Talmudists such as Isaac ibn Gayata, Isaac Alfasi, and Joseph ibn Migas, who founded the so-called “Lucena School”, Lucena preserves few material signs of its Jewish past. While the site of the Judería is reasonably well established, that of the synagogues is uncertain. However, two popular customs recall the Jewish heritage: the ...
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