Recycled Memory: Montjuïc and Stone Spolia

Looking north from the upper city terrace across the valley, your view reaches Montjuïc—the 'Mountain of the Jews'. From at least the eleventh century until 1492, this northern hill served as the dedicated extra-muros cemetery for Girona's Jewish community. Following the Edict of Expulsion, the sacred ground was systematically dismantled. The heavy carved gravestones were broken up and reused across Girona as raw construction material, or spolia. For centuries, headstones bearing ancient Hebrew epitaphs were buried inside church walls, private staircases, and domestic foundations throughout the city. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scholars recovered dozens of these scattered stones, transferring them to the Museum of Jewish History. Looking out toward Montjuïc closes our journey by connecting distant landscape memory to recycled street-level stone.