Synagogue of El Transito
Sinagoga del Tránsito
Interesting facts
- The synagogue survived the anti-Jewish violence of 1391, when rioters attacked Toledo's Jewish quarter.
- After 1492 the Order of Calatrava turned the hall into the church of its priory of San Benito, which also housed the archives of the Calatrava and Alcántara orders.
- The painting that gave the building its name, the Death of the Virgin, was the work of the Toledan Renaissance painter Juan Correa de Vivar.
- Besides praise of Samuel ha-Levi and King Peter, the stucco inscriptions carry passages from the Psalms, Exodus, Chronicles and Kings.
- Hidden lattice screens once shielded the women in the upper gallery from the view of men praying in the hall below.
- Excavations in the early 2000s found remains of an older bathhouse beneath the synagogue's foundations.
- Plans to turn the building into a Sephardic museum began around 1910, and the Museo Sefardí was formally created by royal decree in 1964.
- Samuel ha-Levi fell from royal favour so suddenly that he was arrested in December 1360 and died under torture in Seville.
Why it is worth it
From the lane outside, the Synagogue of El Tránsito is a plain block of brick and stone with a pair of small horseshoe windows over the door. Inside, a single tall hall opens up beneath a carved Mudéjar wooden ceiling, its upper walls covered in lace-like polychrome stucco: interlaced arches, foliage, coats of arms and bands of Hebrew and Arabic inscriptions. Built in the 14th century for a Jewish courtier of the King of Castile, it is one of only three synagogues built under the medieval Kingdom of Castile that still stand.
Its patron was Samuel ha-Levi Abulafia, treasurer and counsellor to King Peter of Castile. The building went up around 1357 as a private house of prayer attached to his palace in Toledo's Jewish quarter, and its master builder is recorded as Don Meir Abdeil. Laws of the time demanded that synagogues be modest, smaller and lower than churches, yet this hall measures about 23 by 9.5 metres and rises some 12 metres to its ceiling. Its decoration echoes the Nasrid stucco work of the Alhambra, which Samuel knew from his dealings with the court of Granada, and the Hebrew texts praise both the king and Samuel himself. The east wall, which held the Torah ark, carries the richest ornament, and a gallery along the south wall with five wide openings was reserved for women. Samuel's favour did not last: he was arrested in 1360 and died in prison in Seville.
After the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, the Catholic Monarchs gave the building to the Order of Calatrava, which turned it into a church. Its name comes from that period, from a painting of the Transit, or Death, of the Virgin that hung inside. During the Napoleonic Wars it served as barracks. It was declared a national monument in 1877 and today houses the Sephardic Museum. Toledo, whose old town is wrapped in a bend of the Tagus, was a centre of Jewish life in medieval Castile, and its historic city has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986.
Getting there
The synagogue stands on Calle Samuel Levi in the old Jewish quarter of Toledo, between the Monastery of San Juan de los Reyes and the Synagogue of Santa María la Blanca, less than 1 km from the city centre. Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD) is about 81 km away.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Synagogue of Santa María la Blanca 0.2 km · synagogue
- Toledo Cathedral 0.5 km · cathedral
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From the encyclopaedia
The Synagogue of El Tránsito, also known as the Synagogue of Samuel ha-Levi or Halevi, is a former Jewish congregation and synagogue, located at on Calle Samuel Levi, in the historic old city of Toledo, in the province of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
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