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Mostar
The city’s Jewish cemetery, which dates back to the eighteenth century, was severely damaged during the 1992-95 war, though it has been partly rebuilt since. The city still houses a tiny ...
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Sarajevo and Surrounding Areas
When the grand vizier Syavush Pasha came to Sarajevo in 1581, the local representatives of the Sublime Porte asked him to separate the Jews from the rest of the population, for “they lit ...
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Iráklion
Within the Venetian outer walls of ancient Candia, the old Jewish quarter is found right beside the seafront. Four synagogues once stood in this district; its perimeter today is delimited by ...
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Canea
The oldest synagogue in Canea, , lives again after a half century of neglect. Raised from its ruins by Nicholas Stavroulakis, former director and founder of the Jewish Museum of Athens, it was ...
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Crete
The Jews have a unique and turbulent history on Crete, one of the most important islands in the Mediterranean. Under the Byzantine Empire, Cretan Jews believed the hour of the final redemption ...
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Rhodes
In the fourteenth century, a Jewish community settled behind the ramparts of Rhodes erected by the knights of Saint John after their flight from the Holy Land. These Jews had the strange destiny ...
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Delos
Visiting the site in Delos is quite easy throughout the summer, the island being accessible by boat from nearby Mykonos. If one place attests to the presence of a Jewish community in Ancient ...
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Corfu
In the late 12th century, Jewish traveler Benjamin de Tudela encountered a lone Jew on Corfu. Three centuries later, however, Jews had become so numerous here that the Venetians, then in control ...
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Ioánnina
Ioánnina, one of the most ancient Jewish communities in Europe, still bears the deep imprint of the long Ottoman presence in Greece. At the heart of the mountainous Epirus region, Ioánnina (280 ...
Location
Thessaloníki
When David Ben Gurion moved to Thessaloníki to learn Turkish in 1910, he was surprised to discover a city like none found in “Eretz Israel”: The Shabbat marked the day of ...
Location
Athens
3,2,1… go! Set off on a marathon walk through time, 2500 years to be precise, to discover the monuments of Athens and its Jewish cultural heritage. Starting with the Panathenaic Stadium. An ...
Location
Istanbul and Surrounding Areas
Sumptuous and decadent, immense and frenetic, Istanbul is “the world in one city”, as it is often described by Western travelers overwhelmed by the city’s splendor. The skyline ...
Location
Burgas
The synagogue here has been transformed into an art gallery. Built at the turn of the century following plans of the Italian architect Ricardo Toscani, during the 1960s it was completely remade ...
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Bulgarian Plains
In the Plains region, Jewish life is maintained by the people of Plovdiv, which boasts a beautiful, colourful synagogue for its few hundred worshippers. Efforts are being made to revive ...
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Timisoara
The first Jews probably settled in Timisoara in the 17th century. Gravestones were found in the city dating from that era. At the end of the conflict between the Austrians and the Turks, a Jewish ...
Location
Bucharest
Jewish Bucharest has almost completely disappeared. Of a population estimated at 158,000 souls in 1948, there remain only 2,000 people today. Living across the four corners of the capital, they ...
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Wlodawa
Jews began settling in Wlodawa in the seventeenth century. By the turn of the twentieth century, they numbered 3,670 (66% of the population), then 4,200 (67%) in 1921, and 5,650 (75%) in 1939. ...
Location
Ukrainian Border
In this region, the town of Wlodawa boasts a particularly interesting Baroque synagogue, built at the end of the 18th century. Nearby is the Sobibor camp, where many victims of the Holocaust were ...
Location
Jozefów
The city of Jozefów possesses a beautiful late-seventeenth century . It can be seen almost immediately upon arriving in the village, on the right and set back a bit in relation to the city center ...
Location
Szczebrzeszyn
Szczebrzeszyn is today a small, tranquil city, with a Catholic church and city hall downtown. A jewish community sprang up in Szczebrzeszyn in the sixteenth century, while the was built here in ...
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Zamosc
Zamosc is a magnificent example from the Polish Renaissance era. Built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Italian architects in the service of Kings Sigismund and Casimir, the city ...
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Kazimierz Dolny
If one stop along the road from Lublin to Warsaw is a must, it is in the city of Kazimierz Dolny on the Vistula, first because it is a tourist city, with old houses, a magnificent rynek lined ...
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Lublin
An important city in eastern Poland, Lublin has preserved a very picturesque old quarter that offers a glimpse of what life was like here in the seventeenth century, with a city hall in the ...
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Lublin Plateau
The Lublin Plateau bears witness to ancient traces of Jewish life, as evidenced by the presence of 17th-century synagogues in Jozefow, Zamosc and Szczebrzeszyn and an 18th-century one in ...
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Lancut
Lancut is a small, pleasant city known for its Renaissance castle once belonging to the Lubomirskis. The town also possesses a Baroque synagogue, one of the most beautiful in Poland. Built ...
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Rymanów
Jews settled in Rymanów so long ago that there exists no document mentioning their arrival. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the inhabitants of the city lived mainly from the cultivation ...
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Lesko
The small city of Lesko possesses one of the most beautiful fortified synagogues in the region, built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with a turret that gives it the look of a little ...
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Rzeszów
Jews began to settle in Rzeszów in the fifteenth century and, in the seventeenth century, built two synagogues, both of which remain, almost side by side. They are fairly easy to find, ...
Location
Tarnów
In Tarnów, half of the population was Jewish: between 20,000 and 25,000 people worked principally in the clothing and hat industries (sixty or so businesses), arts and crafts, and trade. Some ...
Location
Kraków
In 1335, King Casimir the Great founded an independent city near Kraków, Kazimierz, in which he permitted Jews to settle around Sukiernikow (Clothier) Street (now called Jozefa Street), next to ...