Porto Judeu, on Terceira Island, is one of the clearest Jewish-related toponyms in the Azores. The name is old enough to have survived into the formal ecclesiastical designation Porto Judeu de Santo António, which shows that the Jewish marker remained in use even after being absorbed into a Christian framework. The local church was built before 1470, which confirms the antiquity of the settlement. Porto Judeu briefly received the status of vila by royal charter on 12 February 1502, only to lose it again in 1503.

What cannot be stated with the same confidence is the exact origin of the name. The available sources do not prove the existence of a documented medieval Jewish quarter or a stable Jewish community there. Porto Judeu should therefore be read as a toponymic case: the hard fact is the persistence of the name, not a fully demonstrable institutional Jewish presence.

Igreja de São João do Souto, a medieval parish church documented in the twelfth century, was the place where Francisco Sanches was baptized in Braga on 25 July 1551. Born into a family of converted Jewish origin, Sanches later became one of the most important physicians and philosophers of the Iberian Renaissance.

Francisco Sanches

Francisco Sanches is best known for Quod nihil scitur (That Nothing Is Known), published in 1581, one of the key works of Renaissance skepticism. In it, he challenged scholastic authority and questioned the possibility of certainty based solely on inherited systems of knowledge. His work placed doubt, observation, and experience at the center of intellectual inquiry. Beyond philosophy, he also built an important medical career in France, especially in Toulouse, where he taught and practiced medicine.

New Christian Background

His biography belongs to the difficult world of sixteenth-century Iberia, where families of Jewish descent lived under conversion, pressure, and unstable promises of tolerance. Baptism did not erase suspicion, and incorporation into Christian society did not guarantee security. Francisco Sanches emerged from that world of New Christian vulnerability, even though his later career unfolded far beyond Braga and Portugal.

Malhada do Judeu is a rural toponym in the parish of Santa Catarina da Fonte do Bispo, in the municipality of Tavira. Its importance lies not in the survival of a synagogue, cemetery, or other identifiable Jewish structure, but in the name itself. In this case, the historical value is toponymic: the landscape preserves a memory that outlasted the people, buildings, and social circumstances that first produced it.

Toponyms of this kind matter because they may reflect a deeper historical shift. In some medieval contexts, Jews faced limits on their relationship with land, rural property, and agricultural activity. Yet names such as Malhada do Judeu suggest that, over time, Jewish presence could also become associated with rural space, land use, or local ownership. The place-name does not prove the full history on its own, but it points to a social and territorial imprint that survived in the landscape long after its original context became obscure.

In the early 20th century, the photographic studio known as Photographia Ingleza was operated in Lisbon by the brothers Josef (Joseph) Lazarus and Maurice Lazarus, two figures associated with the modern Jewish presence in the city. The studio was established on Rua Ivens, in the Chiado area, one of Lisbon’s most dynamic cultural and commercial districts at the time.

Before settling in Lisbon, the Lazarus brothers had worked extensively in Mozambique, where they became pioneers in the large-scale production of photographic postcards and albums depicting colonial life. This experience shaped their technical expertise and commercial approach to photography. On May 1, 1909, they officially opened Photographia Ingleza in Lisbon, positioning the studio as a provider of high-quality portraiture and photographic prints.

Only three days after its opening, the studio received formal appointment as photographer to the Portuguese Royal Household, a distinction that placed Photographia Ingleza among the most prestigious photographic establishments in the country. From their premises on Rua Ivens, the Lazarus brothers produced studio portraits, official photographs, and images that circulated widely in illustrated magazines and visual media of the period.

The address of the studio is documented as Rua Ivens 53, Lisbon, a detail preserved through photographic stamps and museum records. This location is particularly significant, as it situates the Lazarus brothers within a street already closely linked to the history of Portuguese photography. It is noteworthy, and somewhat ironic, that Photographia Ingleza operated on Rua Ivens, the same street where the renowned photographer Joshua Benoliel lived. This coincidence highlights Rua Ivens as a discreet but important axis of early 20th century photographic production in Lisbon, bringing together, within the same urban space, key figures of the city’s visual culture.

Within the context of Jew Where, Photographia Ingleza stands as a marker of Jewish professional life in modern Lisbon and of the contribution of Jewish photographers to the construction of the city’s visual memory during the period of Jewish reestablishment in Portugal.

The neoclassical statue of Pedro IV stands at the center of Rossio Square, one of the most symbolically charged spaces in Lisbon’s history. Erected in 1870, the monument honors the monarch who granted the Constitutional Charter of 1826 and embodied the liberal transformation of Portugal.

Pedro IV’s political legacy is directly connected to Jewish history in Portugal. The constitutional order he established consolidated the dismantling of the legal foundations of the Inquisition and brought an end to centuries of institutionalized religious discrimination. Although the Inquisition had been formally abolished in 1821, it was the liberal constitutional framework that ensured civil equality and religious freedom, creating the conditions for Jews to return openly to Portugal and to reconstitute communal life during the 19th century after more than three centuries of forced conversion, exile, and persecution.

Artistically, the monument follows a neoclassical language inspired by Roman triumphal columns. The statue rises on a tall Corinthian column, with Pedro IV holding the Constitutional Charter as a symbol of constitutional rule and civil liberties. At the base of the column stand four allegorical female figures representing Justice, Wisdom, Strength, and Moderation, virtues associated with enlightened and constitutional governance.

The placement of the monument is deeply symbolic. Rossio Square was the main stage of the Portuguese Inquisition’s autos-da-fé from the 16th to the 18th centuries, where thousands of New Christians, many of Jewish origin, were publicly judged, humiliated, and executed. The statue thus marks a clear rupture between a space once defined by religious terror and a new civic landscape grounded in legal equality and constitutional freedom.

Moisés Bensabat Amzalak was a Portuguese Jewish economist, academic, and communal leader, born in Lisbon on 4 October 1892 and deceased there on 6 June 1978. His importance in Lisbon lies in the unusual combination of two long public roles: a major career in Portuguese higher education and decades of leadership within the Jewish Community of Lisbon.

Academic and institutional life

Amzalak began teaching in 1922 at the Instituto Superior do Comércio de Lisboa. In 1931, he participated in the founding of the Instituto Superior de Ciências Económicas e Financeiras, later associated with today’s ISEG, University of Lisbon. He served as Director of ISCEF from 1933 to 1944 and later as Rector of the Technical University of Lisbon from 1956 to 1962. Therefore, his name belongs not only to Portuguese Jewish history, but also to the institutional history of economic education in Portugal.

Jewish leadership and wartime Lisbon

His public legacy is also closely connected to the Comunidade Israelita de Lisboa, which he led for more than five decades, from 1927 until 1978. During the Second World War, Lisbon became a major transit point for Jewish refugees escaping Nazi-occupied Europe. In this context, Amzalak presided over the community’s refugee-support section, while other Jewish relief structures in Portugal provided food, clothing, medical care, and organized assistance.

Refugee aid and international networks

The refugee-support framework in Lisbon was strengthened in June 1940, when Portugal authorized the transfer of the HIAS-HICEM central office from Paris to Lisbon. Historical accounts connect this authorization to Amzalak’s ability to negotiate within the Portuguese state at the highest level. Even so, his wartime role should be understood within a broader network of Jewish communal institutions, international Jewish organizations, and Portuguese political circumstances, rather than as the work of one person alone.

Moisés Bensabat Amzalak and Jewish Lisbon

Places in Lisbon associated with Moisés Bensabat Amzalak include the Shaaré Tikva Synagogue, the main synagogue of the Jewish Community of Lisbon, and the ISEG campus at Rua do Quelhas. Together, these places connect his biography to two central dimensions of modern Lisbon: the rebuilding of organized Jewish life and the development of Portuguese academic institutions.

Rossio, today Praça Dom Pedro IV, was one of the principal public stages of the Portuguese Inquisition in Lisbon. The autos-da-fé, formal ceremonies where inquisitorial sentences were read and penalties imposed, were staged here as urban spectacles designed for maximum visibility. Many of Lisbon’s processions began at the doors of the Church of São Domingos, on the edge of Rossio, immediately beside the Palácio dos Estaus, which served as the seat of the Lisbon tribunal of the Holy Office from the second half of the 16th century.

The scale of inquisitorial activity is measurable. Quantitative studies commonly cite 44,817 proceedings (processos) opened between 1536 and 1767, noting gaps for Goa in part of the 17th century. The same scholarship emphasizes that the principal targets of prosecution were New Christians of Jewish origin, and in Lisbon, “Judaism” remained a majority category of accusation, even within a more diverse imperial and cosmopolitan jurisdiction.

Rossio’s inquisitorial geography is also reinforced by archival preservation. The Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo reports 19,775 descriptive records and 2,392,997 digitized images available online for the Inquisition of Lisbon collections, reflecting the volume of surviving documentation connected to Lisbon’s tribunal and its overseas jurisdiction.

The ceremonies themselves followed a fixed logic, public humiliation, ritualized penitence, and the reading of sentences before crowds. While executions were often carried out elsewhere, Rossio functioned as the symbolic center where guilt was proclaimed in public and social stigma was imposed. In the late 17th century, Rome increasingly pressured for punishments to be applied in more private settings, and by the 18th century the public auto-da-fé was in decline.

Key figures (documented totals)

• 44,817 inquisitorial proceedings (processos), 1536–1767 (minimum, with gaps for Goa in part of the 17th century).

• 19,775 descriptive records and 2,392,997 images online for the Lisbon Inquisition holdings at Torre do Tombo.

• 1766: last auto-da-fé in Portugal with condemnation to the stake (as reported by RTP Ensina).

Travessa do Judeu is a historic street located between Bairro Alto and Bica, on the western slope of Lisbon. Its toponym preserves the memory of a Jewish presence in this area, outside the main medieval Judiarias of Alfama and the Baixa, reflecting a more dispersed pattern of Jewish settlement within the city.

During the late Middle Ages, this zone functioned as a corridor linking the upper city to the riverfront, associated with commerce, crafts, and circulation. The existence of a street bearing the name “Judeu” indicates Jewish residence or property in the area, documented elsewhere in Lisbon through records of Jews living beyond formally enclosed Jewish quarters.

Following the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal in 1496 and the subsequent forced conversions, the area was fully absorbed into the Christian urban fabric. No identifiable Jewish architectural elements survive today, but the street name remains as a rare and meaningful trace of Jewish presence in western Lisbon, preserving memory through urban toponymy rather than monumental remains.

Vale Judeu is a toponym used in the area of Quarteira, in the surroundings of Vilamoura, and the exact origin of the name is not explained in a consensual way in the most accessible reference sources. The name has come to designate several points in the territory, beginning with Estrada de Vale Judeu – Quarteira, which structures addresses and nearby roads, as well as the former Vale Judeu railway halt, now closed, which once served the locality on the Algarve Line. In addition, the same name appears in public transport stops in the area, such as Vale Judeu (Igreja), establishing Vale Judeu as a practical reference for local orientation, even when the original reason for the toponym is not securely known.

Monte Judeu is a toponym currently used in Portimão to designate a residential and rural area associated with postal code 8500-141, with local reference to Municipal Road 532 and to streets such as Praceta de Jacob, Praceta de Ester, and Rua de Abraão. This set of names reinforces, at a symbolic level, the connection of the area to biblical and Jewish memory within the contemporary urban landscape.

In the Algarve, toponyms containing the word “judeu” frequently appear in rural contexts, related to fields, hills, and paths, and are commonly read as markers of territorial memory. They preserve the remembrance of past connections to land, property, agricultural work, and landscapes of local production and circulation. Monte Judeu fits within this toponymic layer, linking the present-day map to historical Jewish and New Christian presences in the region, even when the place itself does not retain a direct material trace.