At numbers 11 and 13 Via Salomon Fiorentino is the building of the old synagogue, now owned by the City, the oldest parts of which date back to a substantial restoration which was done in the years 1729-32, which was followed by several others in more recent times. After the removal in 1799 of the Jewish community, which had established itself in Monte San Savino since 1627, the building of the synagogue passed into the hands of the University (i.e. the Jewish community of Siena: having seen nullified, around 1870, the attempted takeover of the building by the Municipality of Monte San Savino, it soon became state property, then private property and finally in 1924 the Municipality became the owner (which in some cases had however already provided for – and would do so later – its most urgent restoration work, the last in being in 2004).
Within the complex, consisting of two buildings, were located both the synagogue itself, on the top floor, and the school, and even probably the homes of the rabbi or of the Confraternity of the Jewish community: it originally had two floors plus the ground floor, now conceivable only from the position of the windows currently lacking the floors. The first part of the building that one encounters at number 13 is lower than the others – this part of the building was rebuilt lowered down as it stands now after a collapse that occurred in 1923 – and has an irregular façade with an ashlar portal and architrave, rectangular windows (you can see another buffered portal) and single-pitched roof; inside, unpaved, one finds masonry arches which were made in the twentieth century to ensure stability in the old walls, and there is displayed, permanently, a photographic and documentary exhibition on the history of Jews and Jewish sites of Monte.
The second body of the building is at number 11, with three floors and a sloping roof, and has an arched portal and framed windows: on the inside can be seen, at the top, a still pretty well preserved painted window and the niche with its frame destined to contain the aron hakodesh (the armoir for housing the Laws) and, below, the remains of pipes for the ciccii used for Miqve (ritual bathing) and the bath itself. In the adjoining private house there is a stone seat that popular tradition used to call “the throne of the rabbi.”
Via Salomon Fiorentino, 11 e 13 – Monte San Savino
Contacts:
Comune di Monte San Savino CF e PI
Tel.: +39 0575 81771
E-mail comune@citymonte.it – turismo@citymonte.it
