An ancient Jewish presence in Sicily: the Europe’s oldest “mikveh” of Siracusa

Sicily is one of the most attractive islands in the Mediterranean Sea and has been a hub of migration routes for millennia. Jews are thought to have settled there at least as early as the 1st century, after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD.

Since 1492, Spain which ruled in Sicily, expelled the Jews from its entire domain. At the end of the last century, the incredible and totally accidental discovery of an ancient mikveh thought to be one of the oldest in Europe, excited archeologist and historians, and spurred the revival of Jewish life on the island.  This precious and large ritual bath was discovered in Ortygia, the oldest neighborhood in Siracusa, the ancient Greek town in the southeast of the island

 

the ancient Greek town in the southeast of the island, has its own Giudecca (Jewish quarter) that used to have 12 synagogues and, just before the Spanish edict, counted a community of at least 5,000 Jews.  Developed on the Eastern side of Ortygia, the Giudecca is a labyrinth of narrow stone-paved alleys crowned by tiny balconies with wrought-iron railings and vases of geraniums and basil.

In 1986, a remarkable treasure was discovered: an abandoned mikveh likely dating all the way back to the Byzantine era, which is thought to be the most ancient in Europe. During the conversion of a crumbling building into a hotel on via Alagona – an area that was completely uninhabited and uninhabitable, covered in rubbish and vandalised – the architects found an unusual arrangement in the pavement of a courtyard, a stone’s throw from the close John the Baptist’s Church. Underneath the courtyard hid a ceiling and an underground chamber.  It took almost 160 truckloads of debris to uncover a 58 steps limestone staircase, divided into three flights of stairs that reached down to a large room entirely carved into the bed-rock, 18 meters below the surface and full of mud and brimming water, with four large square pilasters that supported a perfect cross-vault, with a barrel-vaulted ambulacrum that encircled all four pilaster (that survived Sicily’s strongest earthquake on record in 1693) and with a bench all round the room: most importantly that water that turned out to be fresh and emerging from five mikva’ot in perfect preservation conditions.  Possibly, after the Spanish monarchs’s Edict of Expulsion in 1492, Jews in Syracuse decided to preserve the bath by covering it up with dirt so that it would not end up in the hands of Christians.

An inscription on a stone in the apse of the close church of St. Giovannello, had been noticed by the owner of the place, Amalia Daniele di Bagni, who undertook the restoration works with attentive care, “I had always believed to be Arabic”, she wrote.

Antonella  Mazzamuto, professor at the University of Architecture in Palermo, came to visiti and translated the Hebrew inscription: “To the Synagogue of Siracusa/founded with justice and faith”.  The inscription spoke of the “Synagogue of Siracusa”, so the church of St. Giovannello might have been the old synagogue or it must have been very close. However,  professor Mazzamuto believes that more than this and a second inscription in Hebrew discovered later, it’s the presence of pure and fresh water and the mikva’ot depth, moreover provided with a few steps to facilitate immersion, that proves that this amazing and ancient place used to be a Jewish Mikveh.

 

Paola Barbetti-Bohm