Before this building in Spain was a nightclub, it was a hospital, a church, and a school. But archaeologists have recently determined that, originally, the structure was a medieval Jewish synagogue — one of only five remaining in all of Spain.
Archaeologists first examined the building in 2021 after they came upon a description(opens in new tab) left by a 17th-century priest and historian named Rodrigo Caro. In 1604, Caro described Utrera, a municipality in southwest Spain not far from Seville, as a place where before his time "there were only foreign people and Jews there, for which reason they called it Val de Judíos [Valley of the Jews], who had their synagogue where the Hospital de la Misericordia is now."
The Utrera synagogue was built in the 1300s and likely survived the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain because it was reused and added to over the years, according to Miguel Ángel de Dios, the archaeologist leading the scientific investigation of the building.
