Ancient Jewish Cemetery

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By mid 14c the Jewish community in Barcelona reached a maximum of approx. 4000 persons (12% of total population) and was the largest in the Kingdom of Aragon. The cemetery was located at the east end of Montjuïc, tracing its beginnings to the 9th century, as referred in medieval documents. The attack on the Call -Jewish quarter- perpetrated in 1391 and the forced abandonment of the cemetery resulted in looting the site and selling the tombstones sold to reutilize as building material. A few of these fragments can be seen in some city buildings, and a handful of full stones are displayed in the Museum of History. In the early 15th century, King Martin the Humane granted the area of the Jewish cemetery to the Celestinians, a Benedictine order who looked after the Royal Chapel. The record, kept in archives, defines the neighbor plots of those days. Subsequently the memory of this cemetery is lost, and only preserved through place names appearing in military-historic mapping mainly from the 17th and 18th centuries. The constant human activity (agriculture and stone extraction) has been changing the landscape over many centuries. Thus, the extent of the necropolis has always been considered unknown, given the difficulty of establishing its original limits. However, a team of researchers was able to pull out information from the 'place names' in notarial property deeds and in the cartography of 17th and 18th centuries (the Fort dels Juifs or the Plain dels Juifs). Part of the site has been landscaped or had some facilities built on it, while a fragment is waiting to have a proper intervention to allow the public to learn about its history.