Cáceres

At the Adarve del Cristo (Wall-walks of Christ) it is still easy to conjure up the first houses of the Jewish quarter settled right on the wall-walks of the wall. It would seem that both the stretch running northwards known today as Christ's wall-walks and the one heading south to connect with the San Antonio District were occupied by Jewish families.

Number 4 Cuesta del Marqués houses the Yusuf al Burch Museum, the translation into Arab of the name of its founder, José de la Torre, who excavated here the rainwater tank and baths on which the house was based, decorated with an abundant collections of artistic objects evoking the Arab past of the city and where you can also visit, in addition to the rainwater tank and the baths, the winery, harem, kitchen, sleeping quarters, the garden and different rooms.

The baths, the remains of a private installation, have been said to have a connection with the mikveh the Jewish ritual , perhaps shared with the Moslems, which are located in a 12th century construction. This is a natural source of water from a spring, rainwater or a well whose left wall bears a piping through which the water from the house well continuously circulated. The well water was kept warm by boilers located under the house's courtyard.

Notwithstanding, as has already been stated, it has not yet been possible to clarify whether it is an Islamic or Jewish construction, in other words, whether it actually is a Mikveh.

Excessively lowered, to the extent that in the distance it does not seem to have its actual height, the Arco de la Estrella takes its name from the Virgin of the Star whose image can be found in a Baroque shrine on the inner face of the gate, one of the four providing access to the walled city.

In the immediate vicinity of the Puerta Nueva (New Gate) from the 15th century replaced by the current arch from the 18th century, the presence of Jewish families is documented such as Haim Alvalía or Samuel ben Sem Tob at a time when the municipal ordinances did not yet require Jewish segregation.

The Arco del Cristo, closed in the 1st century, is the only one of the gates in the Roman wall which has stood the test of time to be with us here today. Open to the east, in the lower part of the Monumental City, for centuries it also served as the arch of the Jews, providing access to the Jewish district and possibly connecting it to the graveyard or cemetery. It is worth going outside the wall to admire the proportions of the gate and tower of Christ accompanying it.

This new tourist centre is located in the Old Jewish Quarter of Cáceres and includes a typical house, a garden-vantage point and the Torre de los Pozos (Tower of the Wells), a magnificent example of Almohad fortification, raised 6 metres above the barbican. From here you can behold some of the most characteristic and beautiful spots in the city like the Santuario de la Virgen de la Montaña (Sanctuary of the Virgin of the Mountain), Ribera del Marco stream, Concejo fountain, San Marquino… As an anteroom to the Tower the garden-vantage point has been rehabilitated.

The Tower of the Wells is the most advanced of the watchtowers surrounding the stretches of the wall. Joined to the wall by a 26-meter long watchtower pass, the majority of which has disappeared as it has been incorporated into the dwellings built in the vicinity in the subsequent period, also called the Gypsy Tower it has a trapezoid site nearing a rectangle, rising 14 metres from its base. The current entrance is gained via a wicket gate located on its southern flank which connects it to the rest of the bulwark and via which we can get into the inner chamber of the tower and from there to the upper terrace covered by groin vaults supported on a column formed by three granite tambours which is 1.84 metres high.

It has been conserved intact with various esgrafiats on its northern and eastern faces, an extremely valuable decoration not only as it features as one of the few Hispano-Moslem artistic elements conserved in the city, but also as it constitute a historical legacy of the Almohad presence in Cáceres. Whilst on the eastern and front face of the Torre de los Pozos two eight-pointed stars alternate, common in Moslem art, with false ashlar and teardrops, on the northern face there is an epigraph traced in Al-Andalus script calligraphy in which the Arabists have seen fit to interpret a religious elegy translated as God is our lord. Several metres under this esgrafiat, a knot strip is conserved framing the false and small ashlar, traces of a possible decoration based on lime mortar strips which in the past may have covered almost all the external sides of the tower.

Inside the two-storey house, around twenty scale models are displayed reproducing the civil, military and religious architecture of the city, highlighting those granted by the artist from Cáceres Eusebio Salgado. Accompanying the scale models, we can see various explanatory panels which will help us to understand the historic and urbanistic development of Cáceres.

La calleja del Moral (Moral alley) is a small slope packed with the charm which connects the arch of Christ to San Antonio de la Quebrada street. Jewish families settled in this alley too.

The Palacio de la Isla (Palace of the Island) was built in the 16th century and it currently takes up the space where the New Jewish Quarters' synagogue was located which some have said was located in one of the palace state rooms. The Stars of David in the courtyard commemorate the Jewish presence in these surroundings and the basin with Hebrew inscriptions are some of the elements which serve as a continuous reminder of this final stage of the Hebrew Cáceres collective on the eve of their expulsion.

The palace is a true gem of the Renaissance and its shields and inscriptions evoke the founding family the Blázquez-Mogollón who inscribed on the stone the motto moderata durant nobilitat animus non acta parentumor the classic uanitas uanitatum et omnia uanitasin defence of their lineage against a local branch of the family which refused to acknowledge this. However, the name of the palace can be put down to the its 18th century owners the Marquis of the Island. After serving until 1983 as the head offices of the Provincial Archive and State Library, after recent remodelling it is now used as the Municipal Historic Archive and a multipurpose cultural centre.

The current San Antonio hermitage occupies the plot where the Synagogue of the Old Jewish Quarters had previously stood until 1470 when the aljama, complying with the segregation order, had to grant the temple to Alfonso Golfín, the lord of Torre Arias. The latter decided to knock it down to build a hermitage on its plot under the advocacy of St. Anthony of Padua who would later lend his name to what was the Old Jewish Quarters. Subsequent to these events, a son of Pedro de Carvajal who owned properties annexed to the synagogue after the expulsion, appeared in 1504 as a donator to St. Anthony's Church:

The hermitage lent its name to the District and its main street.

The hermitage façade belongs to Barrio de San Antonio street and its rear is supported on the wall. Before its door there is an open space or square which is integrated by a portico which juts out of the hermitage. The portico has three arches, one front one and two side ones which are half-pointed but irregular, it has a sloping roof and a barrel vault with two very rough and whitewashed windows. The door is lintelled and on it there is a tile bearing the image of St. Anthony of Padua. On the pilasters there are whitewashed granite blocks and the rest is simple, whitewashed masonry.

The hermitage was transformed in 1661 and in 1975 it was restored. Between 1993 and 1994 the Municipal Workshop School remodelled its exterior and embellishment and conservation work was carried out throughout the Old Jewish Quarters: electricity and phone cables were concealed; TV cables and air-conditioning appliances were removed; waste paper baskets were installed and a solution was found for refuse collection; cracks, cornices and balconies etc. were repaired and lintels, jambs and threshold were protected.

The yad, literally the hand, is a ritual pointer used to follow the reading of the text of the Torah. This pointer, currently located at Cáceres Museum, was found in the excavations of Parador de Plasencia in 1996.

The pointer at Cáceres Museum is a bronze piece which prevented the Torahparchment from being touched whilst reading. This measure was taken to preserve the fragile support which is parchment and which sometimes did not absorb ink properly and this could run if the finger moved above the letters.

Plaza Mayor, the anteroom of the amazing Monumental City which Cáceres holds within its walls, symbolises the frontier between the Old Jewish Quarter and the New Jewish Quarter, between the traditional Jewish site within the walls in the steepest part of the Romana and medieval city and the new winds of the 15th century in an expansion of the city which the Jews would end up being excluded from.

A meeting point, a place of transit between the hustle and bustle of the new city and the withdrawal of the previous one, Plaza Mayor opens out onto the walled site through the staircases which rise to the Arco de la Estrella (Star Arch), framed by the 18th century hermitage of la Paz on the left and by the Torre de los Púlpitos (Pulpits Tower) from the 15th century on the right.

The New Jewish Quarters emerged after the decree of 1478 in which the Jews of Cáceres were ordered to gather in a single district outside the walled city. The area selected for this New Jewish Quarters was to be the square delimited by the current General Ezponda street, Concepción square, Paneras street and Plaza Mayor with Cruz street serving as the main thoroughfare thereof. Something still remains in Cruz street, long called Jewish Quarters street, of the atmosphere of that new Jewish district which existed in this form for only fourteen years, though some its settlers remained connected with the area for longer now as New Christians.

Through the Mérida Gate, coming out of the Monumental City and leading to Santa Clara Square which takes the name of the 18th century Clarisas Convent, a narrow alley leads to the Mochada Tower, a watchtower from the 13th century, filled with mud, which strengthened the city's defences in times which were still unstable and which today has been consolidated and recovered as part of the medieval city. Going round it via the gardens right alongside, you reach hat is known as the Olivar de la Judería (Jewish Quarter Olive Grove), a recondite garden which belonged to one of the Jewish houses situated at this end of the city.

Pereros street gives out into Pereros Square which marks the limit of the traditional Jewish quarters. At Pereros square, a plaque recalls that in 1477 the Jews sought out Queen Isabel to ask for greater fairness in the distribution of municipal taxes, and their request was made at a time when there were 130 Jewish families in a total population of 8,000 inhabitants. Once again, as the Jewish city comes closer to the high city, the typicality of the whitewashed houses and modest proportions is gradually replaced by the nobility of the stone houses like that of Pereros from the 15th to 17th centuries which forms a corner between the street and the square bearing its name and which currently houses the Colegio Mayor Universitario Francisco de Sande (University College), a branch of the Provincial Delegation. The square also overlooks the house of Sánchez-Paredes from the 16th century, connects to the end of the wall, solidly protected by the towers of Mérida to the south.

Rincón de la Monja street, as far as its connection to Casa de los Caballos, takes up the whole western flank of the Jewish quarter and the San Antonio district lies below. It is beautiful paved street inaugurated with the splendid presence of the house of Durán de la Rocha with its noble coats-of-arms and its mats protecting the windows and which winds up to the high part of the city, adapting to the terrain and leaving behind it some quite charming spots.

Despite the fact that in this section of the Jewish quarter numerous whitewashed houses can be viewed, stone buildings do still predominate though, some of them settled on the same original rock such as the Compañía de Jesús Convent from the 18th century. Finally, the rear part of the Veletas Palace is joined via an arch to Casa de los Caballos, with both spaces forming part of the Cáceres Museum, the first as the centre for archaeology and ethnography sections (in addition to the spectacular rainwater tank of the former fortress) and the second serving as the fine arts' department of Cáceres Museum where works by Miró, Picasso, Tàpies and Canogar can be viewed as well as the magnificent Jesús Salvador (Christ as Saviour) by El Greco. The museums' pieces also include some references to the Jewish world such as the famous yad or Plasencia pointer.

The Old Jewish Quarters of Cáceres is one of the most beautiful areas in the city within its walls. The urbanistic interventions have been small in scale over the centuries and the current San Antonio de la Quebrada district today conserves a large part of the structure and typicality it must have had when settled by Jews. Its haphazard, steep streets; the simple whiteness of its whitewashed houses; its seasonal flowers on balconies and little gardens and the daily life it houses from a strange contrast with the severe, monumental structures which crown it, the ochre colour of stones bathed in sunlight. Its adaptation to the orography, as it is located in the hilliest area of the walled city, is one of the most string characteristics of the Cáceres Jewish Quarters where the streets and houses form a very varied set packed with nooks and crannies, steps and fanciful spaces which its current residents conserve, adorning them with the flowers of the season and rife with popular flavour.

The streets of the Cáceres Old Jewish Quarter have marked slopes and hills which sometimes have steps as they form that part of Cáceres within the walls which is most difficult to urbanise and this has led to a place containing poor constructions, and its intricate spaces also distance it from the circulation of the major nuclei of the city.

The houses back onto the wall and use it as one of their own and some towers and other spaces as rudimentary gardens or improvised fruit and vegetable patches, combing nature and history with what is popular, something which already occurred back in the 18th century when it was allowed to use the wall for other purposes in view of the fact that it could no longer be used for defensive purposes. They are small houses with one storey or a ground floor and another upper floor, small, haphazard openings and with the majority of the doors lintelled.

After the wall-walked parapet round the wall-walks of the wall, the San Antonio district extends around the intricate street of the same name which winds into streets and alleys, taking up a major part of the south-eastern flank of the city. Its first stretch emerges in a fanciful urban space around which a nucleus of whitewashed houses distributed with landings, steps and some lintelled doors which overlook the current Ermita de San Antonio (St. Anthony's Hermitage). Further on the buttresses of the Casa de los Caballos re-connect the Jewish quarters with this property which includes the Fine Arts' section of Cáceres Museum. At the end of a small street emerging on the left is the Torre de los Pozos, recently restored and encompassing an interpretation centre right in the heart of the Cáceres Jewish quarters.

To reach San Jorge Square, marking the north-western border of the traditional Jewish quarter, you first have to pass by the monumental Santa María Square, a unique set of 16th century constructions where the Mayoralgo palace, the Ovando palace, the Carvajal tower and palace, the house of the Dukes of Valencia and the Procathedral of Santa María - at whose corner the mystic San Pedro de Alcántara indicates the way to the heart of the city - can all be found. San Jorge Square, bordered to the north by the 15th century Golfines de Abajo palace and to the south by the presence at a height of the San Francisco Javier or Compañía de Jesús Church rom the 18th century, is an amazing space organised into various levels which interconnect by way of steps. It is one of the spots of Cáceres which has the most personality. In its lower part in an easterly direction there lies the Cuesta del Marqués, one of the main communication thoroughfares between the Old Jewish Quarter and the rest of the city.

At number 30 of Barrio de San Antonio de la Quebrada street two stars of David can be seen adorning the street and recalling the Jewish past of the San Antonio District.