Girona and Besalú, Jewish Heritage

Description

With this tour you will have a broad knowledge of the history of the Jewish community

In a splendid overview of the Jewish quarter of Girona, installed in the very heart of the Roman Gerunda and medieval Girona and of the great importance that the town of Besalú and its Jewish community came to have, in the Middle Ages.

Duration

8 hours

Itinerary

• 09:30 We will pick you up at our Meeting Point in Girona City: Plaça Sant Feliu, beside "The River Cafe"

• 09:30 to 12:30 Extensive walking tour of Girona City. Included a Visit to the Museum of History of the Jews in Girona, with audio-guide

• 12.30-14:00 Free time to have lunch (Not included)

• 14.00 Depart from Girona to Besalú

• 14:40-16:20 Arrival in Besalú and visit to the town and Micvé if they have availability.

• 16:20 Departure to Girona

• 17:00 Arrival in Girona City, meeting point.

Service

** We have the VTC license for legal transpor t**

It includes:

• Guided visit to Girona of about 3 hours, visiting the entire Monumental area, the Walls and the Jewish Quarter + Visit to the Museum of the History of the Jews with audio-guide
• Guided visit to Besalú of 2.00 hours included the Micvé of The XIII century if they have availability.

Travel

• After picking you up at your hotel in Girona, we will go to the town of Besalú. Approximately half an hour from Girona and the entrance portal to the Garrotxa Volcanic Zone Natural Park.

• The county town of Besalú preserves a unique Jewish heritage site in Catalonia: a 12th century micvé and vestiges of a synagogue, dating from the 13th century. In 1966, Besalú was declared a national historical and artistic complex. Since then there have been many discoveries made and the patrimonial recovery developed magnificent. Its medieval streets of irregular layout and adapted to the orography of the city, the arches, the stairs, the stone houses, the shops that open all year round to offer the traveler the artisan products of the region, the superb Romanesque bridge over the that the urban nucleus is accessed overcoming the waters of the Fluvià ..., everything in Besalú keeps the charm of a time in which this today small town of Girona's Garrotxa was a stronghold and head of a prosperous and powerful county, whose Jewish doctors They enjoyed international fame and whose aljama, under the protection of the counts, possibly constituted between ten and fifteen percent of their population.

• After the visit to the town of Besalú we will go to Girona, undoubtedly the city with the most medieval heritage in the province and with one of the best preserved Jewish quarters of the Middle Ages in Europe.

• From the preserved documentation of the High Middle Ages we know that, between the years 888 and 890, some twenty-five Jewish families settled near the Cathedral of Girona. They came from the hand of Count Dela, who brought them with him after having acquired for his home the Juïges estate (Judaicas in Latin) in the county of Besalú, where until then they would have lived. Much later the term Jewish call or callis iudaicus appears in a document dated July 20, 1160. The community would have grown with new families until it was established in the fourteenth century, with about a thousand souls, ten percent. percent of the city's population.

• The labyrinthine distribution and the medieval flavor of its streets, the steep stairs that constantly oblige to save the different levels of urban orography, the historical and educational contribution of the Bonastruc ça Porta center and, above all, the determined commitment to recover the old Jewish quarter make the Jewish quarter of Girona a unique and fascinating space. The transformations that the neighborhood underwent after the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 have not prevented the call dels Jueus from continuing today to maintain a good part of that cabalistic mystery that characterized the Jews of Girona, in an environment that has remained within its precise limits since the Middle Ages.

• This tour includes a guided visit to the Micvé de Besalú (if they have availability) , considered one of the most well preserved in Europe, and to the Museum of the History of the Jewish Community in Girona.