You are on calle Judíos, the backbone of the old Jewish quarter. Behind that plain doorway hides the only medieval synagogue that survives in Andalusia, and one of very few in all of Spain, alongside the two in Toledo.

1A small, very tall hall

According to its foundation inscription, it was built by the master builder Isaac Moheb in 1315, when Córdoba was already Christian. It is small, because the rules of the time stopped a synagogue from competing with churches, but very tall and covered with Mudéjar plasterwork bearing Hebrew inscriptions. After the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 it became a hospital for people with rabies, and in 1588 a chapel of the shoemakers’ guild. The plasterwork reappeared in the nineteenth century, and in 1885 it was declared a National Monument. The interior can usually be visited; check the conditions on the official website first.

2Maimonides, the Rambam

In Plaza de Tiberíades, a few steps away, Moses ben Maimon awaits you, born in Córdoba in the 1130s. His family fled when the Almohads took the city in the mid-twelfth century. He ended up in Cairo as a physician at Saladin’s court, and there he wrote the Guide for the Perplexed, which sought to reconcile faith with Aristotle’s philosophy.

The square is named after Tiberias, the town in Galilee where, according to tradition, he is buried.

Next to the square is the Zoco, the sixteenth-century house where the poet Luis de Góngora lived as a child.

3What to look for

  • The brick doorway of the synagogue, deliberately modest.
  • The book Maimonides is holding.
  • The crooked lanes of the Jewish quarter, designed to give shade.
Seated bronze statue of Maimonides wearing a turban and holding a book, on a stone pedestal in Plaza de Tiberíades
Maimonides, born in Córdoba in the twelfth century, in the small Plaza de Tiberíades.

Documented

The synagogue was built in 1315, according to its foundation inscription, and has been a National Monument since 1885; Maimonides was born in Córdoba in the 1130s.

Sources and credits

Spanish Ministry of Culture and Junta de Andalucía, information on the Córdoba Synagogue; Francisco Cantera Burgos, Sinagogas españolas (CSIC, 1955); Casa de Sefarad in Córdoba, material on the Jewish quarter and Maimonides.

Photos:

  • Brick doorway of the Córdoba Synagogue on calle Judíos, with a green sign from the Andalusian government: Elliott Brown, CC BY-SA 2.0.
  • Seated bronze statue of Maimonides wearing a turban and holding a book, on a stone pedestal in Plaza de Tiberíades: Xosema, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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