Old Jewish District of Valencia: public (Hamman) and Ritual Batahs (Mikweh)

Old Valencia Jewish district

The old Jewry of Valencia, called El Call, after the conquest of Jaime I (1236), spread along the northern side of the present Calle de la Paz (Peace Street) to the south. Among the most remarkable buildings from jews past we can highlight the bathrooms and the Butcher's, and near the present “Plaza de la reina” was located the Jewish Market or Suk. 

                                

                                        Map of Islamic Valencia (Sanchis Guarner)

Following this map, entering the portal de la Figuera we have at the map the Jewish baths just below.
 

Jews baths were of two types, public and rituals (in Hebrew called miqweh) and they represent an institution both hygienic and religious.
We must then diferenciate between public and ritual bath (Miqweh) within Judaism. 

                             

                              Valencia Medieval District at Medieval Time

Public baths in many parts of Spain were know as a Hamman , and the institution was shared betwen jews and muslims, and afterwards wiht christians too. The Jewish Quarter of Valencia were indeed very similar to the Arab baths and the late one also influenced the Christian Bath Institution still surviving in the city, with their warm rooms in the center and both hot and cold at both sides. In Valencia we had of this type the well knowb "Baños del Almirante ((Admiral Baths) of Christian period (1320). 

 

Similars and  olders in  Medieval Spain, known as Sefarad, are those of Saragoza, of jewish origins and arabic influences, with its columns much like those of our "Baños del Almirante". These baths of Zaragoza are cited in some documents from the thirteenth century, the earliest reference corresponding to 1266. They are located in the Jewish quarter opposite the fortress called "Castle of the Jews" (a complex with jail, synagogue, hospital, butchers). Today it remains only a part of the baths : a room, of substantially  rectangular section with vaulted ceiling, covered with 8 point-stars lighting windows. This large room could communicate with another room colder vaulted with a two arched section perhaps the caldarium and frigidarium. They are XIIIth century Mudejar (moors living under christian rule)  with formal elements of christian Cistercian style.

 

   Jews Baths of Saragosa                                 Small Room

The next step was the ritual Bath or Miqweh. To participate in the ritual bath, the Jewish oral tradition of the Talmud requires the cleaning of any physical dirt, before gaining admission to pass the second barrier of physical and spiritual purification. The ritual bath is attached to the synagogue. Oral Law speaks about natural waters of "sources and wells" (Leviticus 11:36). To participate in the liturgy of the Jewish Temple and Jewish piety ceremonies one had to be purify of such contamination as the menstrual period by means of the immersion of the whole body in a ritual bath. The Talmud describes how it should be built a “Mikweh” and its conditions. Therefore, the entrance to the public baths preceds the miqweh immersion. In biblical times John the Baptist reshape this purifying sense to penitential one and Jesus focused on the personal sanctification. Archaeologists have found in Qumran baths from I century b.C and in the Judeo-Christian period others have been discovered in Nazareth, with seven steps of descent and ascent that symbolizes the new creation of the person . 

 Ancient Miqweh at the Holy Land

The source of ritual bath water should be running canals or rain water when gathered in an underground cistern.
 

 The characteristics of the ritual bath or Miqweh can be observed which is in the town of Besalu, near Girona. It is the only of its kind discovered in the Iberian Peninsula and of the few known in Europe.

                                                          
                                                                    Miqweh of Besalu

Now we are already able to answer about two questions: Was there a public jew bathhouse in Valencia? Yes and possibly it followed the pattern of Zaragoza Hammam and in Valencia were it was located near the Portal de la Figuera.

Did we have a Mikweh in Valencia? We do not have the security whether about this point nor about the site, but they would probably located between the public baths and the synagogue. In the village of Sagunto, 30 km north to Valencia, a supposed miqweh house has been discovered, dating from the fourteenth century, in the so called Casa dels Bereguer. The room is vaulted and retains the ancient seven steps symbol, and the tank that was used to collect rainwater.

                            

 

Supposed Miqweh of Sagunto

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Visite Valencia con nosotros

 

Modernist Art Temporary Exhibition in Valencia: Sorolla and Benlliure

 

We were at the Bellas Artes San Pio V (Fine Arts Museum). There we assisted to the new temporary exhibition about Clotilde de Sorolla, the wife of the famous Valenican painter Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923). About 20 paintings and 25 drawings that deal with the wife and muse that constantly accompanied the artist, from his youth until the painter's death. Their romance started around 1879, in their youth. The visitor, through light paintings, enables to open the door to the privacy of the family of Joaquin, a painter of light in Valencia and expressiveness of the look of his woman, laughing, playing and accompanying the birth of their children. 

            Fishermen                Royal Bridge in Valencia

Another set of pictures show us portraits reading in the garden of his home in Madrid. The last section shows Clotilde assisting to the creation of the last art-pieces and having vaccation and leisure around Spain. Finally, Clotilda takes care of her husband at the last days and the public impact of his death.

                                       Clotilde de Sorolla in Blue dress

Alongside this exhibition visit please the pavilion dedicated to Mariano Benlliure in a small chapel next to the Jardines de Viveros (Royal Gardens) where one can admire the artistic talent of a contemporary of Sorolla, the Sculptor Mariano Benlliure. Between different sketches turning around nature and dame portraits you will admire the splendid mausoleum of the great Toreador of the beginning of XXth Century, Joselito. This splendid bronze piece represents the devotional line that accompanied crying his coffin in his last paseíllo (walking ceremony before the corrida)till the cemetery. José Gómez Ortega was a bullfighter of gipsy background who reached the summit of this art, according to his critics. But around 1920, he failed in Madrid, and agreed to fight a corrida in Talavera, with his brother in law Ignacio Sanchez Mejias. That was his very last one. The fifth bull' sharp horns pierced his stomach and he died. The famous sculptor of this time, Benlliure composed the sculpture in 1926, and it was exposed to the public at the Palace of Fine Arts, settling permanently in the Cemetery San Fernando of Seville.

 

Sketch for the Mausoleum of Joselito

                                         

                                                    

 

Mausoleum of Joselito in San Fernando 

Cemetery of Seville

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 ¿Have a visit?

Velluters Distict of Valencia: old and new Glimpses

The district Velluters is are my favorite one around Valenciawith the Market and Carmen, since I was born there and moved along those narrow streets during my childhood.

It is also the damagest due to successive enlargements of the city and further degradation of the streets because of some remain of the ancient "brothel".
Velluters is a neighborhood that is named the "Mercers" and Silk trade workers since they had many factories from the sixteenth to the eigthenth centuries, with a good presence of Genoese craftsmen. Proof of that, the image of the Virgin of the Helpless that this group built in an altar to the Church of St. Augustine. This church has conserved proudly the oldest image of devotion of Valencia, Our Lady of Grace. Other religious monuments are the church of St. Charles Borromeo, due too to this very brotherhood of the Genoese, next to the old general hospital and the academy of surgery, the Pilar Church, run by the Dominican fathers.

    

 

Among the civil architecture of the district stood once the old Provincial Hospital of Valencia, together with the Faculty of Medicine, demolished in the pasts 60s of the last century. Today has it been restored into a space for the Muvim museum of the Illustration with interesting temporary exhibitions of art and ethnography. And the hospital cruise became a Municipal Library, the Library of the Hospital with an interesting interior. 

 

New Gardens on Ancient Medicine Facultty

The new gardens of orange and palm tress have been recently opened and is a gathering of young bohemian of this district, the “Gothic area”, and socializing of people accompanying a huge variety of dogs.

The palace of the silk Arts&Crafts is the next interesting building, unfortunately, as our newspapers write without a definite project for restoration. And thing most remarkable when you can not understand without this institution the main monument of our Middle Age heritage such as The Silk Exchange Market or the Lonja. The third important building of this area is the Palace Tamarit, from an interesting family of farmers from Ruzafa, which derived their agricultural efforts in investment into the lucrative silk looms.

 

Entrance Silk ARst&Crafts Palace

In this environment also stands The School of Arts and Crafts and several traditional Valencianl dressing companies, as Albaes, who pioneered the design both artisanal and industrial of silk clothing of Valencia, whose main exponent focuses on Spring feasts of St. Joseph, known worldwide as Las Fallas.

Are you encouraged for this route?

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Know more about:
Juan-Luis Corbin Ferrer, Barrio del Pilar, antiguo de Velluters, Valencia 1991
Joan Boronat-Josep vicent Boira-Ricardo Franch, El Palau Tamarit,  Valencia 2011.
 See and Visit

Ecotours: rivers and streams, and a new path to Mediterranean Sea

 

Our specialist guide for adventurers and group biking tours offers you today a reflection and a proposal about southern Valencia (Spain). It is a simple route through wich you can explore in some three hours a special landscape during winter and springtime seasons.
This is the map of the route where the river Júcar / Xúquer flows out to the sea along the citrus fields of Valencia beside the Natural Ressource of Albufera Lake.
The route allows you to visit magnificent villages at the foot of the mountains such as Corbera or Alcira, and to visit but chose to visit riverbank towns as Polinyà del Júcar, Riola and Fortaleny.

The dominant vegetation is the wide fields of orange groves, this very sweet orange that was once discovered in these regions, the sweet orange grafted from the original bitter according to a tradition of Massores in Carcaixent hort. More beautiful oranges are the navel and navelin, with stark fruitful colour and flavor that brings full citrus taste without any note of bitterness to our palate. We ride along a bike path across small towns as Polinyà, Riola, Sueca and Fortaleny always on located on the river bank. 

                                        

The river path lies on a peralted platform that permits you to take a watch on around the green mountains the orange valleys, the myrtle talls of Alcira and Corbera, the rice marshes of Sueca and to the end the mediterranean waters near Cullera.
Also a question. 

The authorities of the region we visit, could they join efforts to expand this cyclable path to other towns, so that one could go almost from the mouth of Cullera up to other populations such as Alzira and Algemesí Júcar up?

 

Areyou encouraged for thisroute?

The Bridges of Valencia and the descent into the river bed

 

Valencia is characterized by the large number of bridges along old Turia riverbed, some fifteen bridges, most of them of medieval root like the Trinity, Serranos and “Puente del Real”, others modern style such as the Gateway, Pasarela or Pont de Fusta, such others avantgardist From the architect Santiago Calatrava. The flowers Bridge is one of the best known.
This set of bridges is complemented by the defense of water system that would prevent flooding and is known as the parapets and its artistic environment.

This system is a colossal unit work for its size hardly comparable with other European river defenses.

Its main part is the “old work” or obra Vella" started between the bridges of Trinidad and El Real between 1591 and 1592 and from the Real Bridge to the Sea. The parapets were done between 1606 and 1674. This parapets also contain some decorative works, concentrated in the Paseo de la Pechina, with handrails, ramps, stairs and stone work. Especially in the southern parapet near the Botanical Gardens, one can find a wide ramp down to the river dated from 1765. This is a railing of Stone-walk for loading and unloading to the river, with horse-drawn carts or draft animals or beasts of burden. The aforementioned ramp has some bumps in stone that can be considered the ancestors of our speed bumps at the entrance of our towns.
                                             
This kind of speed reducers permitted to the horse chars a safely to our Turia river bed. Then mule driver loaded the wood coming from the mountains, filled water pitchers or perform other functions. At the bottom of the bumped stone walk there is a great convex shape Shell. This famous sculpture gave name to the alley known by valencian people as Paseo de la Pechina.
                                                                 
If you drive your bike a little further up in the Turia River Park, at the height of the "Water House" you can consider a stone-bow into the walls, marking an ancient canal or water intake of this ditch, named acequia de Rovella.
       
The Canal of Rovella at his end beside the Music Palace (2012) and at 1946.

The beginning of Rovella Canal at 1950 and 2012




Plant and tree elements, both Mediterranean and American, give a new life today to the city renew river bed. The newly planted trees are particularly interesting to us such as jacaranda tree of Brazil and Peru and South American Bottle-tree.
                                                           

Ancient Turia river bed new and refreshed gardens. A beautiful setting and a unique scenery for its history and cultural values​​, as well as a marvelous urban gardens that positions Valencia as special destiny in Europe.

We ecologist would only ask authorities to add soon to this this vegetation belt the ancient Jesuit college garden connected with the Botanical Gardens.

The more beautiful Bridges of Valencia

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Véase 

y sal de ruta con nosotros

 

Visit to the Medieval Jews District of Valencia, Spain

Valencian Medieval Jewish District: The Jewish Valencia is an unknown for many people so that we I will propose you today this detailed itinerary across the jewish ghetto about 1390 BC-

The name for Jewish Ghetto in local language was jueria and officially was called the Call to some coming from qahal legal community, to other from Latin Callis, the "street".

The extent of Jewish district Valencia matched the parish of Santo Tomás around 1240 and its expansion in 1390 with San Andrés Parish church.

We begin our tour of the call walking along r the expansion of 1390, highlighted in blue color on map

Wall. Inside the cloister of the ancient University, in the way toward the history library, one can see see on the ground some houses beneath the Christian wall canvas from the time of Pedro el Ceremonioso, King of Aragon, from 1356 around. The Jewish quarter of that time contained the expansion of the ancient settlement by population growth or new families coming in the fourteenth century.

According to the some historians close to the later Palacio del Patriarca (Patriarch Palace) stood the synagogue Çamalhesit, perhaps the last synagogue built. The Hebrew word would sound as shem - a (l) - hesed, "The Name of the Pious One" or “compassionate Lord”. The hasidies are the current orthodox in Jerusalem. The synagogue was called in Hebrew Beth-hakeneset, “The House of the Community” and next to it was the Bet-midrash "the" House of Study ".

The walls of the Jewish district bordered the present University and Palace “Marques de Dos Aguas” until reaching the Plaza Margarita Valdaura.  

Margarita De Valdaura and Luis VIves streets

Next to which was the Market or souk, the busiest part of this craftsmanship and hand-working people. The Jews lived devoted to crafts and trade in luxury items and making loans. The craft had been represented by items of inlay, gold and silver. In this souk lived workers engaged in crafts, with artisans dedicated to footwear, textile (tailors, weavers, dyers, metal), paying oft renting for the obrador (Stall). Near here, to the Market square, Jewish merchants were intermediaries in the trade of oriental silks and leather pieces and weapons from Northern Europe. This call was semi-destroyed in the assault on the wall that took place by the summer of 1391, when a priest from Andalucia (archdeacon of Ecija)) made some anti-Semitic sermons in Seville's Cathedral and sparked a wave of antisemitism that lighted the flame of hate at northern Spain, following the destruction of the Call.

Between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the golden age of Valencian culture, three illustrious Jews lived around this site. According to tradition on the edge of the old souk, near Plaza of Margaret of Valdaura, the great humanist Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540). The illustrious Renaissance man studied at the newly founded University of Valencia around 1508 and in Paris from 1509 to 1512 and then moved to Flanders in 1512. Meanwhile, both his father and grandmother in Valencia fell into the hands of the Inquisition. His friendship with Erasmus of Rotterdam led him to teach at the renowned Leuven University, then got a friendship with Thomas More which opened to him the doors of Oxford University. Back in Leuven, Vives tutored many noble persons from the environment of Emperor Charles V and came to consult supporters both of Reformation and Counter-Reformation. His classical thought seeks to give the Prince a harmonious education which will bring peace among states. His theory of education based on the Bible and the Greek classics in a transfer of tradition from master to disciple may have influenced the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. His wife, Margarita of Valdaura born in 1505 in the heart of a wealthy Jewish family, moved to Bruges shortly thereafter, considered an extension of the Crown. Luis Vives was his preceptor when she was only seven years old, and Margarita was his faithful wife and the secretary of this encyclopedic man and secular intellectual model for the time. Also dramatic was the end of another Valencian family of the mid-15th century, the Alcanyis. Lluís Alcanyís was born in Xàtiva and moved to Valencia where he followed medical studies from1467 to 1462, period in which he joins the local cultural life, and highlighting interest in letters and medical research. He was married twice, with Jewish converts women. His second wife, Elionor Esparça gave him four daughters and a young, Francesc, also a doctor. In his teaching as Professor Lluís Alcanyís was medical examiner from 1467 to 1477 and taught surgery until 1487. With the founding of the University of Valencia in 1499 Lluís took the medicine and surgery chair, and between 1500 and 1504 he taught in the chair of "Principles and Practice of Medicine". As a part of this discipline he wrote a treatise against epidemics whose title Regiment contra la Pestilencia shows his concern for the prevention of diseases, due to the recent Valencia plague of 1490. Luis Alcanys along with his wife, Eleanor Esparza, were condemned by the Inquisition to the stake in Valencia.

 Original Map of P. Tosca, of XVIIth Valencia

at St Thomas Church 

Finally Luis de Santángel, born in Valencia the same year than Luis Vives in 1492, was born in a family of converted Jewish who came from Aragon. His grandfather Azariah, was founder of the Jewish community of Daroca, and moved to Valencia for commercial reasons , where he settled nearby the parish of St. Thomas. His son Luis Santángel was enriched through the leasing fees and taxes for the crown to the Genovese community. When he died, his son Luis Santángel Vilamarchant was granted by King Ferdinand of Aragon the printing money supervision from 1479 to 1481 when he was charged with general supervision of Royal Finances. Luis met with a Cristobal Colon discouraged in his projects at 1486 and Santangel intercession was essential for the acceptance of the “Capitulaciones de Santa Fe”, signed by the same Santángel, who advanced part of the sum for the expedition. Columbus himself will write to him the first letter with the relationship of the discovery of the New World. In 1497 Santangel obtained a status of limpieza de sangre (Blood cleaned statute), a privilege that protected him before the Holy Office. Louis died in 1544.

Three such important Louis for so small neighborhood, don't you think?

Ask for a guided visit

Bibliografia:

Hinojosa, José , la judería de Valencia en la Edad Media, Valencia 2007.

Niclós,José Vicente, Tres culturas tres religiones en la Península Ibérica, Salamanca 2012, pp.285-340.
 Rodrigo y Pertegas, José, La judería de Valencia, apéndice a la obra de José Sánchis Sivera, La iglesia parroquial de san Esteban, Valencia 1913, pp.245-267.


Sanz Ruíz, Fernando,“Guía de recorridos históricos de Valencia”, Valencia 2006.

Teixidor de Otto, Mª J.-Boira i Marqués, El entorno urbano de la Universitat, pp. 164-165.

“Un paseo por la judería de Valencia”, Levante-Emt, 28-01-2006


“Los judíos en la Valencia medieval”, Las Provincias, 23-09-2012


"Plano de la judería", Esther Blanco Tamayo (UPV), basado en plano de Rodrigo y Pertegás.


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Saturday September 8, 2012 Journal of a bike tour, the day of the triathlon in Valencia, suburban adventure

Out of Valencia in bike into the park of the Albufera represents recovering the the landscape of childhood and also our people, linked to irrigating water and the wetlands
Leaving back the futuristic architecture of Santiago Calatrava at the City of Arts and sciences, we ride our minds to the past centuries in history. Three farmhouses around a common courtyard just off the city's perspective 

 reminds us of the great Hebrew or Arab family clans that share the essentials in Mediterranean Lands.

The observation point at Pinedo Beach allows us to observe the rice fields and the green pines of the Meadow innland's, and the blue september sea to the right, with camels-like loaded ships waiting for the download at the Port.

                       

We reach the beach of El Saler where we enter a forest that combines the saline depressions of former wetlands with pine trees wrapped in honeysuckle mantle,

                                            

Further away the gorge of El Saler opens and closes its doors, like a giant opens his arms, to grade the level of water in the rice fields that surround the lake.                          

                              

Exhausted Bikes after 15 miles riding seem to look into the sea and likedt to jump into the water as their enthusiastic owners.
The aerial view from the perspective of a friend's appartment allows us to combine seashore and pine-forest with the prospect of the rice fields and their engines in line, as patients guard-corps.  

                                      
Finally, the sun set in the west of the lake will invite us to say some promises as the golden atmosphere purifies our soul.

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