Toledo Jewish Quarter

Rightly regarded as a true city within a city, the madinat al-Yahud, or city of the Jews, constitutes a broad urban space which occupies almost ten percent of walled Toledo. The Jewish quarter of Toledo is divided into different districts, each corresppnding to the different stages of expansion, creating an intricate maze that needs to be marked out in order to gain a real overview of how the Jews of Toledo acted and they lived for at least eleven centuries. Although the oldest written documents date their presence back to the 4th century, in the context of the Roman Toletum, the Sephardi goes further back and relates the Jews to the very mythical origin of the city, deeming it likely that the first Jews arrive in the Iberian Península at the time of the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles in the 8th to 6th centuries B.C.