Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki in Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece | Museum

The Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki has been founded to honour the rich and creative Sephardic heritage as it evolved in the city after the 15th century. Consequent to the horrible expulsion from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, Jews began to arrive in the safe haven of the city in big numbers bringing with them an awareness of Renaissance culture and languages of the Western Mediterranean.

The Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki documents the history of skills such as printing, cartography, medicinal sciences and knowledge of contemporary weaponry that made the Iberian Jews an asset to the Ottomans. Very rapidly, Sephardic creativity in Thessaloniki reached high point in the 16th century. The city provided a climate of tolerance and economic stability; it was not by chance that Thessaloniki was given an added name - "Madre de Israel", Mother of Israel. Tagically, a great fire in 1917 destroyed most of the Jewish Quarter in the heart of the city and today, the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki is housed in one of the rare Jewish structures that survived that fire.