The Leiria Printing Monument, in Travessa da Tipografia, marks the public memory of one of the earliest printing contexts in Portugal. The site is associated with the d’Ortas family, a Jewish printing family active in Leiria in the final years of the fifteenth century, when the city became one of the main centres of Hebrew printing in the kingdom.

The Leiria Printing Monument and the Judiaria

Travessa da Tipografia functions today as the urban reference for this printing memory, within the historic area connected to the medieval Judiaria de Leiria. Municipal heritage material links this place to the arrival of the Ortas family in 1492 and to the printing of several Hebrew incunabula, followed in 1496 by the Almanach Perpetuum of Abraham Zacuto.

The workshop is connected to Samuel d’Ortas and to his sons, including Abraão d’Ortas. Their activity belongs to the broader context of Iberian Jewish printing after the expulsion of the Jews from Castile and Aragon in 1492, when Jewish refugees, scholars, artisans, and printers moved through Portuguese towns.

Hebrew Books Printed in Leiria

The works associated with the d’Ortas press include Mishle, or Proverbs, with Targum and commentaries, printed in Leiria in 1492. Another major work was Neviim Rishonim, or Former Prophets, printed in 1494 with Targum and commentaries by David Kimhi and Levi ben Gershon.

In 1495, the workshop also printed Jacob ben Asher’s Tur Orah Hayyim, one of the central halachic works of medieval Judaism. These editions show that Leiria was not only a place of technical printing activity, but also a centre where Jewish legal, biblical, and exegetical knowledge was materially produced and circulated.

Almanach Perpetuum

The best-known work printed by the d’Ortas family is the Almanach Perpetuum by Abraham Zacuto. It was translated into Latin by José Vizinho and printed in Leiria by Abraão d’Ortas on 25 February 1496.

The book contained astronomical tables used for calculation and navigation. It is widely treated as the first scientific work of mathematical character printed in Portugal. The Leiria Printing Monument preserves the urban memory of this exceptional moment, when Jewish printing, Hebrew scholarship, and scientific knowledge converged in late medieval Leiria.