Accessing the interior of the city wall via the Alcázar Gate and after passing through Don Gerónimo and Alemania streets we reach Reyes Católicos street, previously known as Cal de Andrín street in the middle ages. Reyes Católicos street possibly located one of the city synagogues in the same place where today the ermita de Nuestra Señora de las Nieves (hermitage of Our Lady of the Snows) can be found. This street was the location for the majority of Jewish trades and workshops, although today, its buildings relate more to the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
Site Tag: Attraction
San Pedro Church
Saint Peter’s Church started being built in 1100, in a Romanesque style, and since then, the building and its decoration have evolved. On the exterior, the triple header, an apse on each of the naves, brings together an amazing sculptoric repertoire with vegetal, fauna and geometric motifs, also including religious scenes like the history of Cain and Abel or the Temptation of Adam. Altogether this would be the first construction stage. At the second of these stages the transept walls were built and at the third, the lateral naves. The artistic criteria gradually changed with time, and the arches started to become evident as the preface to the Gothic tendencies that came to show. Finally, upon completing this Romanesque stage, the dome was raised. St. Peter’s Church is connected to a painful past for the Hebrew community: in Saint Peter’s court, a judgement was celebrated – the incrimiation of the Jews in the case of the Holy Child of the Guards, showing the anti-semitism in the fifteenth century. A child would be taken to receive a series of terrible actions to evoke withcraft, and whomever was guilty, would be sentence to death. This event portrayed the rarity of the coexistence between Jews and Christians in this era. Since then, St. Peter’s Church was declared a National Monument in 1914.
San Vicente Basilica
The Basilica of San Vicente dates back to the 12th century, but it was priorly built on a place of worship that is hard to define. The Basilica is a compendium of Romanesque architecture as their construction lasted until the 13th century, additionally bearing traces of the late Romanesque, directly preceding Gothic art.
The inclusion of this monument on the Ávila list of cultural heritage related with the Jews can be put down to the extraordinary reliefs which decorate the cenotaph (13th century), where the remains of the martyrs are kept. These saints were the siblings Vicente, Sabina and Cristeta, and they suffered martyrdom during the persecution of Diocletian (around 360) by refusing to admit they had carried out pagan rites. Tradition would have it that their bodies were laid out on a rock and the first basilica was built at this site. Its construction was paid for by a Jew who had boasted of his martyrdom: when he was gloating over the torture they were being subject to, a snake wrapped around his body. He then repented, converted, and built the church.
The Basilica of San Vicente converted to Christianity, and the Jew went ahead with the erection of this place of worship where he himself would later be buried. Now, the martyrs’ remains are located in urns arranged at the Main Altar, and the cenotaph is admired for its excellent carvings. The Basilica of San Vicente was declared a National Monument in 1882.
St. Andrew´s Gate
The outskirts of St. Andrew´s Gate constituted another of the major nuclei of the Segovian aljama. At the end of Martínez Campos street was the access to the steps which led to parapet of the wall, about 200 meters accesible, within the old guard it is shown the history of the bastion around three kilometres long erected on masonry limestone and founded on the very natural defences provided by the site. As well as getting to know the wall and the defensive system of its gates, the visit allows a tour around part of the wall-walks, whilst enjoying priceless views of the surroundings with the Jewish necropolis on the other side of the valley. Next to San Andres Gate it is located the Tourist Information Point La Muralla. Near Socorro square, where the monument to the folklorist Agapito Marazuela has now been erected, was the Campo Synagogue of which there is documentary evidence that it was built in 1459 at the site known as the «Boneyard», at the behest of doña Elvira, the wife of the Jewish convert don Diego Arias Dávila. One of the three Jewish butcher´s of the aljama was also located here.
San Juan de los Reyes Monastery
The monastery of San Juan de los Reyes began to be built in 1477 by order of Queen Isabel the Catholic to commemorate her victory at the battle of Toro in 1476. Its monumental presence right in the heart of the Jewish quarter as a royal symbol for the Catholic Monarchs. The Catholic Monarchs were initially the only source of refuge for the Jewish communities before the persecutions which occurred in the late 15th century, yet they were the ones who signed the Decree of expulsion of 1492, thereby putting a permanent end to a long period of cohabitation between Jews, Moslems and Christians. The convent’s austerity contrasts with the grandiosity of the church, adorned by spacious large windows, arches and Gothic pinnacles, on whose walls the chains of the Christian convicts which had hung there since 1494 when the Catholic Monarchs recovered them after the conquest of Granada. The church was built to house the dynastic pantheon of Queen Isabel the Catholic dedicated to St.John the Evangelist. Finally, the monarchs changed their mind after the conquest of Granada, and they are buried in the Royal Chapel of the cathedral of this city. The convent was practically destroyed in the war of Independence and was only partly rebuilt, with the second cloister disappearing according to historicist criteria of the 19th century, leaving no distinction between the old and the restored one, the best example of which is the gargoyles of the cloister.
Cambrón Gate
The Cambrón Gate or Bab al-Yahud (Gate of the Jews) is the main entrance and exit of the Jewish quarter and of the city via the west. It is a highly modified gate of Muslem origin and its location coincides with the south-eastern limit of the former Jewish quarter of Toledo. The current version dates from 1576 and it was structured by repeating the Bisagra structure, in square form based on a small interior courtyard surrounded by four towers covered by slate chapters. The Cambrón Gate has fragments with Roman reliefs similar to those of the Sol gate. On both sides, there are Renaissance gateways with coats-of-arms, that of the city on the exterior and that of Felipe II on the interior. Under the latter a beautiful image of St.Leocadia can be seen, the patron saint of Toledo. The gate also bears the inscription reminding that the residents of Montes de Toledo, part of the city, are except from passage rights. Its name is associated with brambles, thorny plants which are abundant in the area.
Small Arc of the Jew – Arquillo del Judío
The Arquillo del Judio (Small Arch of the Jew) is located near the confluence of Reyes Católicos and Ángel streets where the Sofer synagogue was situated. This small arch is was passage which joined the districts of Assuica and Alacava with the main Jewish quarter via the Travesía del Arquillo, which is said to have borne witness to the sale of the jewels of Queen Isabel the Catholic to finance Colombus´ American venture. The present arch is not the original one, but was reconstructed to look like the original.
San Martín Bridge
The San Martín Bridge, located in the old Jewish quarter of El Degolladero, leads to the Puerta del Cambrón, an ideal place to start the journey to the Jewish quarter of Toldeo. The bridge is alongside the waters of the Tagus, with a view of the city, providing a better understanding of the complex, difficult but fascinating history of a Jewish quarter like that of Toledo. A Jewish quarter where the keys of the houses of those who had gone into exile in 1492 had become the greatest symbol of the Sephardi nostalgia. The Jewish quarter of Degolladero largely coincided with the current Reyes Católicos street and the San Martín bridge and river. It took this name because this was the site of the Jewish butcher´s, where the poultry and cattle were slaughtered. A statue of Isabel the Catholic (1451-1504), the Queen of Castile, was located at Reyes Católicos street, very near the monastery of San Juan de los Reyes. Under the edict of expulsion of 1492 the Catholic Monarchs sent between 170,000 and 180,000 Sephardis into exile.
Santa María la Blanca Church (Former Synagogue)
Santa María la Blanca Church was built in the 13th century as a synagogue, but then it was transformed into a Christian temple in 1391, after the slaughters in the Jewish quarter of Seville. In 1252, King Alfonso X, after the taking of Seville by his father, granted a synagogue to the Jews inhabiting the San Bartolomé and Santa Cruz area. The synagogue stayed until 1391, when it was converted into a Christian church. The name and dedication of Santa María de las Nieves was imposed on it by the cathedral´s chapterhouse. The side gateway, which can be accessed from Archeros street, conserves two Roman shafts crowned by several Visgoth chapters which correspond to the old synagogue. The current church of Santa María la Blanca was built in 1662 in a Baroque style, and it has a structure divided into three naves which, in turn, is split into red marble columns. The vaults are decorated in plasterwork and attributed to the Borja brothers. Murillo was probably involved in the church decoration Works and it was he who painted the midpoints, plundered by Marshal Soult during the French invasion, subsequently being replaced with copies
Santa Cruz Church (Former Synagogue)
After the slaughter in 1391 of over four thousand Jews at the hands of Sevillians driven on by the Archdeacon of Écija, there were barely any Jews left in Seville. The synagogue gradually stopped being used, and after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain ordered by the Catholic Monarchs, the synagogue was converted into a Christian church under the dedication of Santa Cruz. The architecture of this temple rested on four unequal columns. With the destruction of the temple the Church of Santa Cruz ended up setting up on Mateos Gago street and the columns were moved to the Jardín de la Aclimatación, near the Delicias gardens. This site was bought by Antonio de Orléans, the Duke of Montpensier, to annex it to the gardens of the Palace of San Telmo After the purchase in 1926 of part of the palace gardens to construct pavilions of the Iberoamerican Exhibition of 1929, La Rábida was opened and the current wall of the gardens was put up. In this way the columns were framed in the Access nearest the Chile Pavilion of the current San Telmo Gardens.
