The Former Hammam Saint-Paul is located at 4 rue des Rosiers, in the Marais, one of the main areas of Jewish memory in Paris. Its façade still preserves the painted inscription “Hammam Saint-Paul”, together with visible signs for “Sauna” and “Piscine” above the upper windows.

Public baths in the Marais

The building was constructed in 1856. In 1863, it began operating as a public bathhouse under the name Bains romains, or Roman Baths. At that time, many Parisian apartments did not have private bathrooms. Public baths, steam rooms and swimming pools were therefore part of the practical infrastructure of urban life.

The documentation describes the establishment as a public bathhouse, with a swimming pool, steam room, hydrotherapy room and later bathing cabins. It should not be confused with a mikveh. The available sources identify the place as a hammam and bathhouse, not as a Jewish ritual bath.

Former Hammam Saint-Paul and the Jewish Marais

Its Jewish significance comes from location and social use. The Former Hammam Saint-Paul stood in the heart of the Jewish Marais, around Rue des Rosiers and Place Saint-Paul, the area often called the Pletzl, from the Yiddish word for “little place”.

From the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, this part of the Marais was shaped by successive Jewish populations. Around Rue des Rosiers, Jewish residents opened shops and workshops, built synagogues, created associations and formed one of the best-known Jewish neighbourhoods of Paris.

In this context, the Hammam Saint-Paul belonged to the everyday geography of the Jewish Marais. Architectural and local history sources describe it as frequented by the Jewish community established in the neighbourhood from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the post-war decades.

The 1928 façade

In 1928, the architects Boucheron and Jouhaud modernized the façade. Their intervention gave the building its most recognizable surviving appearance, with red granito, yellow painted lettering and sculpted signs marking the sauna and swimming pool.

Municipal records also preserve details of the older bathing complex. By 1894, the site included a building on the street and a structure extending into the courtyard. In 1899, the baths were raised by one floor, under the architect Bastouil, to add bathing rooms.

The 1928 project for the “grands bains romains” shows a functional bathing circuit. It included a rest room on two levels, a pool, two sudatories and service areas arranged around a defined route through the building.

Closure and surviving trace

The establishment closed at the end of the 1980s, after around 130 years of use as a bathhouse. It was then converted into commercial and office space, and most of its interior fittings and decoration disappeared.

In 2009, the building became home to a COS clothing store. The interior has been modernized, but the façade still preserves the old Hammam Saint-Paul inscription, the sauna and swimming pool signs, the sculpted lion heads and the red granito surface associated with the 1928 modernization.

The Former Hammam Saint-Paul remains a surviving urban trace of the social life of the Jewish Marais, preserved today mainly through its façade at 4 rue des Rosiers.

Haverford College Library preserves fragmentary Hebrew Bible leaves associated with Elvas and dated in Tiago Moita’s corpus to 1467. These fragments are a rare material witness to Hebrew book production in late medieval Portugal.

A Hebrew Bible copied in Elvas

Moita identifies the manuscript as a Bible in fragments, produced in Elvas and copied by a single scribe, Samuel al-Faruni. The copy was commissioned by Moisés, son of Abraão Caldes.

This information is important because it preserves more than the survival of a biblical fragment. It records a city, a date, a scribe and a patron. Together, these elements place Elvas within the network of Hebrew manuscript production in fifteenth-century Portugal.

The surviving fragment

An older Haverford catalogue describes the manuscript as one double leaf of vellum, written in two columns of 25 lines per page. The preserved biblical text includes passages from 2 Kings.

The manuscript should not be read as evidence for a book that remained in Elvas. Its relevance lies in what the fragment documents: the copying of Hebrew biblical material in the city before the forced conversion of Portuguese Jews in 1497.

Hebrew book production in Portugal

The fragments belong to the wider corpus of medieval Portuguese Hebrew books. This corpus includes biblical, liturgical, legal, philosophical and scientific manuscripts copied for Jewish readers, often through direct relationships between patrons and professional scribes.

For Elvas, the Haverford Hebrew Bible fragments are especially significant because the material evidence for medieval Jewish life in the city is limited. They preserve a precise documentary trace of Jewish intellectual and scribal activity in 1467.

The Jewish objects at the National Museum of Archaeology in Belém are best understood as a dispersed archaeological and documentary constellation. They do not form a single Jewish gallery. Even so, they preserve some of the most relevant material traces for studying Jewish presence, memory, and transmission in Portugal.

The museum, founded in 1893 by José Leite de Vasconcelos, became Portugal’s central institution for archaeological collections. Within that wider national archive, the Jewish-related material occupies a particular place. It connects Roman Lusitania, medieval and early modern Hebrew memory, manuscript culture, and modern collecting practices.

Jewish objects at the National Museum of Archaeology

A preliminary list published by the MNA in 2017 identified several cultural objects with possible or direct relevance to the history of Jews in Portugal. These include Hebrew manuscripts, a Book of Esther scroll, a leather sheet written in Hebrew, and a manuscript concerning the expulsion and general pardon of the Jews. This group shows that Jewish memory in the museum is not only archaeological. It is also textual, legal, liturgical, and archival.

The presence of these documents matters because Jewish history in Portugal was often preserved through fragments. Some fragments are inscriptions. Others are manuscripts, copies, references, or objects displaced from their original contexts. In this sense, the MNA collection helps show how Jewish heritage can survive outside synagogues, cemeteries, and community buildings.

The menorah intaglio from Ammaia

The most important object in this context is the ring stone with a menorah from Roman Ammaia, catalogued as MNA Au 1193. It is a small nicolo intaglio, dated broadly to the Roman period, usually between the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Its imagery includes a seven-branched menorah, together with other Jewish ritual symbols associated with Jewish visual culture in Late Antiquity.

This object is exceptional because it belongs to the earliest archaeological evidence for Jewish presence in the territory of present-day Portugal. It does not, by itself, prove a fully organized community in Ammaia. However, it strongly supports the presence of at least one Jewish individual, and it strengthens the broader argument for Jewish life in Roman Lusitania.

The ring stone also changes the scale of interpretation. Jewish history in Portugal is often approached through medieval quarters, expulsions, New Christians, and Inquisition records. The Ammaia intaglio pushes the discussion further back. It places Jewish presence within the Roman landscape of Lusitania, before the better-documented medieval period.

Hebrew memory, replicas, and collecting

Other objects in the MNA list require a more cautious reading. The museum records a pendant amulet in the form of a hexalpha with the Hebrew inscription “Zion,” acquired by José Leite de Vasconcelos in Karlsbad in 1921. This is a Jewish object in the collection, but it is not evidence of ancient or medieval Jewish life in Portugal.

The same caution applies to the replica of a Hebrew inscription from the Jewish cemetery of Espaldão, in Faro. The original was recorded in 1903 on the cemetery wall, and two copies were made. One remained connected to Faro, while the MNA preserved another. Here, the value lies not in original archaeological context, but in preservation, documentation, and the circulation of Jewish epigraphic memory.

Together, these objects make the Jewish objects at the National Museum of Archaeology historically significant. Their importance is not only aesthetic. It lies in the way they connect material culture, Hebrew writing, Roman mobility, collecting history, and the fragile survival of Jewish traces in Portugal.

The Judiaria Velha de Coimbra was one of the earliest documented Jewish quarters in medieval Portugal. Its existence is attested from the first half of the twelfth century, when documents already refer to a Jewish urban area in Coimbra. In 1130, the expression “arravalde de ilis judeis” appears in relation to the quarter. In 1137, references such as “ripam de Judeorum” and “Viccus Judeorum” also point to the same Jewish space. By 1139, documentation connected to the demarcation of the parish of Santa Cruz referred to the Jewish slope, confirming that this was already a recognized part of the city’s medieval topography.

The Old Jewish Quarter

The Judiaria Velha de Coimbra was located in the area of today’s Rua Corpo de Deus and its surroundings, on the slope between the medieval walls and the zone connected to Santa Cruz. This was not a vague or isolated Jewish presence. The early documentation identifies a structured communal landscape, with a synagogue, ritual baths, cemetery, butcher’s space, and albergaria. That combination is important because it shows that the Jewish community of Coimbra already had the essential institutions of organized communal life in the twelfth century.

The quarter occupied a sloping area with a strong urban identity. Written sources place it near the route of Rua Corpo de Deus, in a zone that medieval documentation associated with the Jewish neighborhood, the albergaria of the Jews, the synagogue, and the almocávar, the Jewish cemetery. Its location also shows that the Judiaria Velha was part of the broader formation of medieval Coimbra, not a later marginal addition to the city.

Synagogue and Archaeological Evidence

The strongest material evidence connected with the Judiaria Velha de Coimbra comes from archaeological work carried out in Rua Corpo de Deus and Largo de Nossa Senhora da Vitória. These interventions identified medieval structures dating from between the twelfth and the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. Part of these remains has been cautiously associated with the medieval synagogue. This does not mean that the synagogue can be reconstructed in full, but it gives rare archaeological weight to the documentary references.

This point is central to the importance of Coimbra. In many Portuguese towns, medieval Jewish life survives mainly through documents or place-names. In Coimbra, however, the Judiaria Velha combines written references, urban memory, and archaeological remains in the same area. For this reason, the quarter is one of the strongest cases for studying the material presence of medieval Jewish life in Portugal.

The Mikveh of Coimbra

The Mikveh of Coimbra gives the Judiaria Velha exceptional patrimonial value. Discovered in 2013 at Rua Visconde da Luz, 21, it is situated within the territory of the first Jewish quarter, in the area later delimited by Rua Martins de Carvalho, formerly Rua das Figueirinhas, Rua Corpo de Deus, and Rua Visconde da Luz, formerly Rua do Coruche. The structure was carved into the rock at about three meters below the present street level. It preserves the essential spaces of a ritual bath, including an antechamber for preparation and a pool accessed by seven steps.

The mikveh confirms that the Jewish presence in Coimbra cannot be reduced to names in documents. It also had a ritual and architectural dimension. Together with the references to the synagogue, cemetery, butcher’s space, and albergaria, it shows a community with religious, social, and practical institutions rooted in the medieval city.

From Judiaria Velha to Later Jewish Coimbra

The Judiaria Velha seems to have been abandoned or deactivated from around 1370. After that process, Jewish life in Coimbra shifted toward other areas of the city, including the zone later associated with the Judiaria Nova. This movement reflects a wider medieval pattern of relocation, regulation, and reorganization of Jewish urban space.

By the fourteenth century, Coimbra had become one of the most important Jewish communities in Portugal. The value of the Judiaria Velha de Coimbra lies in the depth of its evidence. It preserves one of the earliest documented Jewish quarters in the kingdom, supported by references from 1130, 1137, and 1139, by archaeological remains in Rua Corpo de Deus, and by the rare survival of a medieval mikveh within the old Jewish territory.

Shaar Hashamaim, “Portico of Heaven,” was founded in 1813 in what was then Beco da Linheira, today Travessa do Ferragial, under the leadership of Rabbi Abraham Dabella. It is generally identified as the first public synagogue of modern Lisbon, at a moment when the Jewish presence in the city was beginning to take shape again, although still without full legal recognition. Early twentieth-century reference sources emphasize precisely this ambiguous situation: Jews were tolerated, but did not yet have a fully stabilized status, which makes this foundation a particularly important milestone in the return of organized Jewish life to the Portuguese capital.

The creation of the synagogue did not arise out of nowhere. From the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, small Jewish groups, connected above all to international trade, were settling again in Lisbon; in 1801 they had already obtained a burial space in the English cemetery of Estrela, and in the following decade there were private or rudimentary places of worship. Shaar Hashamaim thus marked the passage from a discreet and domestic religious practice to a more stable communal structure, although still conditioned by the legal limitations imposed on non-Catholic worship.

The importance of this synagogue is also measured by the continuity it generated. After the death of Abraham Dabella, in 1853, its administration passed to a committee composed of Leão Amzalak, Levy Bensabath, Abraham Cohen, Fortunato Naure, Mair, and Moisés Buzaglo. This shows that Shaar Hashamaim was not an isolated episode, but part of a broader process of institutional consolidation. A recent study points in the same direction by linking this nucleus to the genealogy of the future Jewish Community of Lisbon and indicating that the synagogue remained active in 1913.

The street itself also helps to read this history. The old Beco da Linheira officially came to be called Travessa do Ferragial by decree of 7 November 1874, preserving only indirectly the memory of the place where the synagogue functioned. Although the material history of the building still remains somewhat unclear today in the more accessible bibliography, Shaar Hashamaim retains an exceptional historical value: it was one of the first spaces in which the modern Jewish presence in Lisbon ceased to be merely tolerated in private and acquired a communal, urban, and lasting form.

Rossio Square and the former Paço dos Estaus are linked to one of the decisive ruptures in Portuguese Jewish history. After King Manuel’s expulsion decree, Jews were led to believe that they would be allowed to leave the kingdom. Instead, the crown concentrated many of them in Lisbon, restricted departure, and turned the promised embarkation into compulsory conversion. The final phase of that process was centered at Rossio, where the Estaus stood on the square’s northern side.

On Easter Sunday, 26 March 1497, the mass baptism took place by the Estaus House. Jews gathered in Lisbon were taken to several churches across the city and forcibly baptized, without free consent. What had been presented as departure ended in forced incorporation into Christianity, and openly organized Jewish communal life in Portugal was brought to an end.

After 1497, there were no longer publicly recognized Jewish communities in the kingdom. In their place emerged the category of “New Christians”, while Jewish practice, identity, and memory persisted in concealed, fragmented, and often persecuted forms.

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.

Alain Oulman (1929–1990) was one of the most influential cultural figures of 20th-century Portugal. A composer, intellectual, and political dissident of Sephardic Jewish origin, Oulman played a decisive role in transforming Portuguese music, particularly fado, by introducing a new musical language grounded in literary depth, harmonic innovation, and poetic rigor. His work marked a clear break with traditional forms and helped redefine the genre in a modern context.

Oulman collaborated closely with leading Portuguese poets and writers and is especially remembered for his partnership with Amália Rodrigues, for whom he composed some of the most emblematic works of modern fado. Beyond music, he was deeply engaged in intellectual and political life, opposing the Estado Novo dictatorship. This commitment led to his arrest by the political police (PIDE) in 1966 and, shortly thereafter, to forced exile in Paris, where he continued his cultural activity until his death.

Alain Oulman was born in Paço de Arcos, in the house marked at this location. The residence is directly associated with his origins and early life and later became a meaningful space within his personal and cultural trajectory. During the mid-20th century, the house functioned as a private setting of artistic creation and intellectual exchange, hosting musicians, poets, and thinkers at a time when public cultural expression was constrained by censorship.

As a place of birth and as a lived space connected to his formative years, the house stands as a material anchor to Oulman’s biography. Within the context of Jewish history in Portugal, it represents a modern and secular expression of Jewish presence, rooted in cultural production, intellectual resistance, and civic engagement. As a point on the Jew Where map, the house marks not only a physical location, but also the beginning of a life that would leave a lasting imprint on Portuguese cultural history.

Joshua Benoliel was born in Lisbon on 13 January 1873 and became one of the most important visual chroniclers of Portugal in the early 20th century. He is widely regarded as a founding figure of Portuguese photojournalism and is often described as the greatest Portuguese photographer of that period. Of Jewish ancestry, he held British citizenship throughout his life, and a documented Lisbon address places him and his family at Rua Ivens, no. 6 (4th floor), in Chiado.

Before turning fully professional, Benoliel worked at the Lisbon Customs (Alfândega). He developed his photographic practice alongside the photographer Chaves Cruz, first as an amateur and later as a professional reporter. From the early 1900s through the 1920s, he built an exceptional visual record of Lisbon and Portugal, photographing not only daily street life but also the major political and social turning points of his time.

Benoliel followed the Portuguese royal household and covered state ceremonies, diplomatic encounters, and visits involving foreign royalty, producing images associated with King D. Carlos and Queen D. Amélia, among other leading figures of the era. His work also captured defining historical events and social realities, from the final years of the monarchy through the instability of the First Republic, including public ceremonies, civic inaugurations, political turbulence, and moments of social conflict. His photographic legacy is frequently estimated at around 60,000 images, a rare archive for understanding Portuguese life and modern urban change in the first decades of the 20th century.

His career is closely associated with O Século, one of the most influential newspapers of the period. He worked there as a photographic reporter between 1906 and 1918, and later returned in 1924, remaining active until his death. He also collaborated internationally, including correspondence for Spain’s ABC. Over his lifetime he received distinctions linked to his photographic work, including recognition in international exhibition contexts. Joshua Benoliel died in Lisbon on 3 February 1932.

A substantial part of his legacy is preserved in Lisbon’s municipal collections. The Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa safeguards an important corpus of his work within the “Benoliel” photographic collection, which preserves thousands of images that document Lisbon and Portugal around 1900 to 1930. The same collection also includes significant later work by his son, Judah Benoliel (1900-1968), extending the family’s photographic documentation into the mid 20th century.

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.