Tour departs from Malaga

Day 1
Malaga

Arrival to Malaga.

In Malaga, the Juderia was in the eastern part of the city, and the communal cemetery was on the slopes of Gibralfaro. When Southern Spain was attacked by the Berbers (1013), and Cordoba overrun, much of Cordoba's Jewish community fled to Malaga. In the mid 11th century, there were 200 Jews living in Malaga out of 20,000 people. In 1487, when Malaga was conquered by the Christian monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabelle, the entire community of 100 families was captured and ransomed for 1 million maravedis. Finally, in 1490, the King and Queen ordered that Malaga be settled only by Christians, and the Jews were expelled. The community was revived in the early 1960's by Jews from North Africa.

Day 2
Malaga

Malaga. City Tour

The Alcazaba fortress, the Gibralfaro castle, the unfinished Cathedral, the old Jewish quarter, the Roman Theater, Larios Street, City Hall, Alameda Park, the Beach area, the Palace of Buenavista, housing the Picasso museum. Later, visit the bullring and finally taste some of Malaga’s sweet wines.

Day 3
Drive to Granada

Like all Jewish communities in Spain, Jewish Granada prospered under the Ummayad caliphate (755-1013). But when Cordoba was sacked by the Berbers in 1013, and Moslem Spain broke up into a number of petty kingdoms, Granada began to grow in importance. At the center of this ascendancy stood Samuel Ha'Nagid, a Jewish refugee from Cordoba. After living for a brief time in Malaga, Samuel was invited to become the secretary to the King's vizier in Granada. Under his guidance, Granada became an important center of Jewish learning and culture.

Granada. City Tour

The visit starts with the Palace of Charles V in renaissance style. Once inside the great Fortress and Palace of the Alhambra, you will feel as if you have been transported into another century as you wander through the Lion’s Court and the Room of Secrets and lovely views over the Albaicin old district, declared World Heritage Site and the Sacromonte, which houses Spain’s largest congregation of gypsies. Then we walk through the exquisitely beautiful Generalife Gardens filled with fountains and flowers and afterwards a view to the Realejo former Jewish quarter.

Day 4
Drive to Jaen

In the 9th century Jaén had a synagogue and next to it a Yeshiva or centre where studies were provided about the la Torah and the Talmud. As from 2002 archaeological excavations have been carried out inside the urban fabric of the Jewish quarter and there, at the plot between Martínez Molina al Sur, Santa Clara in the North, San Andrés in the West and Los Caños and Murcia in the East streets, a structure has been revealed which could be identified with a bath which may have been that of Ibn Isaac Ben Saprut.

Jaen City Tour

We visit the Jewish quarter and oldest part of Jaén which is dominated by the Fortress that stands on Santa Catalina hill. The Castle of Santa Catalina currently houses the Parador de Turismo. At its feet, the oldest districts spread around the churches of La Magdalena, San Juan and San Ildefonso. But the core of this historic quarter is the Cathedral in Renaissance style.

Day 5
Drive to Ubeda

Ubeda. the complex urban design of Úbeda did not create a strictly Jewish quarter, but there are small areas where they lived like the Alcázar, Barrio de Santo Tomás and Barrio de San Lorenzo. Most members of the Jewish community developed activities like gold and silver jewellery, tannery and metallurgy, farming, medicine, and tax collecting. The Synagogue of Water with various elements such as the arches of the Synagogue, The Women’s Gallery and the Ritual Bath (Mikveh).

Ubeda. City Tour

Visit the Synagogue of Water, the Jewish areas, the Renaissance buildings, the Chapel el Salvador, the Palace of Constable Dávalos, nowadays converted into a Parador, the Palace of las Cadenas, site of the City Hall and the Hospital of Santiago.

Day 6
Drive to Cordoba

The Jewish presence in Cordoba is almost as old as the city itself. Having arrived in Andalusia, according to the old chronicles, in the days of King Solomon, it is more than likely that the first Jewish families that set up in Cordoba did so along with the Romans. By contrast to the tolerance of the latter, the succession of restrictive measures implemented by the Visigoths, in particular after the conversion to Christianity of Recaredo in 589, led to the Jews openly supporting the Moslem conquest of 711. It was from this juncture onwards that the so-called Golden Age of Spanish Judaism occurred when the Rabbinic academies of Cordoba were so renowned the Jewish ministers of the caliphs.

Day 7
Cordoba

Cordoba. City Tour

The pretty and lovely city of Córdoba, declared World Heritage City. The tour visits the Great Mosque-Cathedral that constitute an unique architectural space, the Alcazar fortress, the Jewish quarter, the Synagogue and the Sefarad House.

Day 8
Drive to Lucena

Lucena, the Pearl of Sefarad. It is the late 9th century when Eleazar ibn Samuel Hurga, one of the most prominent Spanish Jewish scholars of the time, conducts his work in Lucena. The most important material finding in recent Lucena history in relation to Jewish culture was the discovery of the Jewish necropolis in 2007, from which 346 tombs were excavated in the southern ring road area. A further 50 tombs were discovered in a neighbouring area in 2011.

Lucena City Tour

We visit the Jewish quarter, the church of San Mateo, place of the former synagogue. The house of Rico de Rueda, the churches of Santiago and Madre de Dios, the Palace of the Count of Santa Ana and the Castle of Moral, originally a medieval fortress.

Day 9
Drive to Sevilla

The Jewish quarter of Seville included the current districts of Santa Cruz, Santa María la Blanca and San Bartolomé and it was separated from the rest of the city by a wall which came down from the start of Conde Ibarra street, passing through Mercedarias square. During the Visgoth era we assume the Sevillian Jewish quarter had a considerable influence as, in view of what they were like in trade and industry, they must have prospered where there was more wealth and population. What´s more, Seville was the most highly populated city in Spain and the intellectual capital of the kingdom.

Day 10
Sevilla

Sevilla. City Tour

Panoramic tour of the city with the Plaza de España and Maria Luisa Park. Afterwards the walking tour with the royal Alcazar fortress and gardens, the Casa Sefarad Al-Andalus, the third largest cathedral in the world and walking through the Barrio de Santa Cruz former Jewish quarter.

Day 11
Sevilla

Departure from Sevilla.