Former Jewish House

Jews and Inquisition

VISIT
ARCHEOLOGY
c/ Ñuflo de Chaves
Exteriors
cruces en la pueta

On Ñuflo de Chaves Street, the main street that gives access to the main square, we find an old house of Jewish inhabitants, which we can intuit by three key elements in its stone façade that, in addition, are usually combined:
– Its proximity to the Plaza Mayor, in one of the main streets of the town, a street where the main businesses of commerce and finance were located (the Jews were born traders).
– The presence on its right jamb of a ritual sharpening recess, an area worn by sharpening everyday tools (cutlery, sickles and other sharp tools).
– And the cross engraved precisely on that same jamb, a cross that testified that at that moment its inhabitants ceased to be Jews to become a house of Christian inhabitants, either because it was the converts themselves who put the cross, with the intention of appearing to be good Christians in the eyes of the community and, above all, of the Holy Inquisition; or because it was a house requisitioned by the Holy Office from Judaizers and, once in the hands of the Holy Institution, the mark that would mark the new ascription to the community that followed the Path of the Crucified would be engraved.