The Rua Nova da Judiaria was one of the streets of the late medieval Jewish quarter of Santarém. Its memory is preserved today in the area of Travessa da Judiaria and Rua Maestro Luís da Silveira, on the eastern side of the Marvila plateau.

The fifteenth-century Jewish quarter

Documentary and archaeological research places this area inside the fifteenth-century Judiaria. The main axes of the quarter correspond to the present Rua Maestro Luís da Silveira and Travessa da Judiaria, identified with the medieval Rua de S. João de Alpram and Rua Nova da Judiaria.

The Judiaria stood near Rua Direita and the city gates, in an area connected to circulation, trade, and the local fair. This position helps explain the importance of the Jewish commune of Santarém, one of the principal Jewish jurisdictions of the Portuguese kingdom under King Dinis and later confirmed under King João I.

Archaeology and urban change

An archaeological intervention at Avenida Cinco de Outubro, numbers 2 to 8, recorded a dense urban area with domestic structures, paved circulation, and a fourteenth-century cistern. The evidence shows an urban fabric that was later reorganized, abandoned, and partially transformed.

At the transition from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, the street was paved with limestone blocks. The abandonment of some domestic spaces began in the final decades of the fifteenth century, during the same period in which the legal and social framework of the Jewish quarter was collapsing.

Later memory of Rua Nova da Judiaria

By around 1600, the street identified in the excavation had been abandoned along its full length. A later reference from 1732 mentions an old street near the church of São Martinho already converted into gardens, which may correspond to this former urban axis of the Judiaria.