PEARL OF SEFARAD

PEARL OF SEFARAD

A historic town with a rich Jewish heritage, famous for its Academy of Talmudic Studies and the largest excavated Jewish cemetery on the Iberian Peninsula.
Few Jewish communities established in Al-Andalus achieved such renown as Lucena, known as the Pearl of Sepharad, whose cultural splendour can be compared to that attained by the Spanish-Hebrew literary circles of Córdoba and Granada during the Caliphate and the Taifa kingdoms. All Jewish and Muslim chroniclers prior to the European Renaissance describe Lucena as the ‘City of the Jews’ during the 9th to 12th centuries. Lucena was home to the Academy of Talmudic Studies, a meeting place for the great intellectuals, philosophers, poets and physicians of the time. It boasts the largest excavated Jewish necropolis on the Iberian Peninsula, where the tombstone of Rabbi Lactosus was discovered; it is currently housed in the Archaeological and Ethnological Museum, located in the Castillo del Moral.