The Jewish quarter · Seville
Jewish presence in the Iberian peninsula goes back two thousand years. In Seville the quarter as such was born after the Christian conquest of 1248, between Santa Cruz and San Bartolomé, and lasted a century and a half. Almost nothing of it is left standing, and yet the memory is still there — beneath the Murillo Gardens, in the archives, in the language the exiles took with them. Casa Sefardí gathers it and opens it online.
Here the past is not behind you: it is beneath you. This page is read by digging.
The dig · six layers
You begin at the surface.
Layer I · Surface
Today
Seville has a Jewish community and a synagogue again, and since January 2026 it is once more part of Spain's Network of Jewish Quarters. Casa Sefardí gathers that memory in a virtual museum open to anyone, from anywhere: six rooms, six arches and the documents that prove it.
Layer II
1492
The edict of expulsion: three months to convert or to leave. Some fifty thousand Jews set sail from the port of Seville; with them travels the Castilian that will become Ladino.
Layer III
1391
Archdeacon Ferrán Martínez preaches against the Jews until the pogrom breaks out: whole families die, emigrate or convert. The quarter will never be the same.
Layer IV
1248
Ferdinand III conquers Seville. Alfonso X shares out the city and grants the aljama three mosques to turn into synagogues, enclosing it within the wall: only now is the quarter of Santa Cruz and San Bartolomé born.
Layer V
712
Isbilya changes hands. Under Muslim rule the Jewish community — “people of the Book” — practises its faith paying tribute, living scattered through the city: there is no evidence of a Jewish quarter of its own. Centuries of coexistence, splendour and tension begin.
Bedrock
2nd c.
Beneath every layer, the first trace: Jewish presence in Baetica is documented from the second century. Here the digging ends — and the two thousand years of history in the peninsula that this museum tells begin.
What rises to the surface
Seville keeps no synagogue that can be visited: the aljama's three became churches. In the collection, the multifoil arch repeats the shape of a hejal — the ark that holds the Torah — so that what was lost can at least be seen.
Read: Seville's three synagoguesUnder the Murillo Gardens rests the cemetery of the quarter, found during the works on Cano y Cueto street. Much of it was never excavated: the community still sleeps beneath the garden.
Read: the Jewish cemetery beneath the Murillo GardensDoña Leal, eye doctor to Jews, Christians and Muslims; Ana Gonçales, butcher by licence of Queen Isabella. Their contracts are still in the archives, and from there they pass into the collection, copied word for word.
Read: Doña Leal, eye doctor, 1474The survey
Alfonso X enclosed the aljama inside the city wall and gave it three mosques to turn into synagogues: what today are Santa Cruz and San Bartolomé. The cemetery lay outside the wall, where the Murillo Gardens are now — and beyond: Jewish tombs have been found at the edges of the Buhaira gardens. Those streets are still there, under other names; the quarter is not. It is a neighbourhood to be read more than visited.
The project today
The museum
Casa Sefardí is, for now, an online project. Six rooms trace the city's Jewish history, from its Roman origins to today; you enter from anywhere, at any hour, with no ticket.
The holdings
From each arch hangs a historical document transcribed literally: from Saint Isidore to the abolition of the Inquisition in 1834.
On the ground
What can still be walked is the neighbourhood itself. The Jewish history tours run through the quarter all year round with Altai Turismo.
Frequently asked questions
In the historic centre: it is today's Barrio de Santa Cruz and part of San Bartolomé. It was born after the Christian conquest of 1248, when Alfonso X gave the aljama three mosques to turn into synagogues and enclosed the quarter inside the city wall.
The street plan of Santa Cruz and San Bartolomé, stretches of the wall that enclosed it (such as the one on Calle Fabiola), two churches that were once synagogues (Santa María la Blanca and San Bartolomé) and, beneath the Murillo Gardens, the necropolis. The third synagogue, Santa Cruz, vanished with its church in the nineteenth century.
Barrio de Santa Cruz (and, in part, San Bartolomé). After the pogrom of 1391 the synagogues became churches and the parishes gave the streets their names; Santa Cruz was one of those three converted synagogues, so the neighbourhood's name is, in fact, the trace of the Jewish quarter it once was.
Beneath the Murillo Gardens, just outside the walls of the old quarter. It was found during works on Calle Cano y Cueto and remains largely unexcavated: the necropolis is where it always was, even if it can no longer be seen.
No. When you search for a Jewish quarter in Spain, Córdoba and Toledo usually come up first, as they preserve more buildings. Seville's is a different story: that of the 1248 enclosure between Santa Cruz and San Bartolomé, with its three synagogues, its wall and its cemetery, which this site documents.
Yes. The Jewish History of Seville route walks the wall, San Bartolomé, Santa María la Blanca, the necropolis and Plaza de Santa Cruz with official guides from Altai Turismo, in Spanish and English. Book it on the tours page.
To go further
Red de Juderías de España – Caminos de Sefarad (official site)Visit Seville, the city's official tourism siteAltai Turismo, the official guides who run the Jewish-history tours
