Fodor's Expert Review El Call

Girona is especially noted for its 12th-century Jewish Quarter, El Call, which branches off Carrer de la Força, south of the Plaça Catedral. The quarter is a network of lanes that crisscross above one another, and houses built atop each other in disorderly fashion along narrow stone medieval streets. The earliest presence of Jews in Girona is uncertain, but the first historical mention dates from 982. This once-prosperous community—one of the most flourishing in Europe during the Middle Ages—was, at its height, a leading center of Kabbalistic learning.