Museum of Jewish History stands as testament

Hidden among the maze of alleyways east of the Onyar River, the Museum of Jewish History stands as testament - if an inadvertent one - to the completeness of Spain's destruction of its once-thriving Jewish population.

Inside the museum, set in what is said to be Girona's last known synagogue, designers have layered the ancient architecture with all the flourishes of a contemporary museum, complete with glass-lit cases, multimedia displays and an audio tour in several languages.

In one case sits the signet ring belonging to Girona's most famous Jewish son, Rabbi Moses Ben Nahman Girondi, the legendary Judaic scholar known as the Ramban or Nahmanides.

The sight of the ring inspires the kind of spine-tingling intimacy with history that museums like this aim to evoke - that is, until the voice on the audio guide announces that the ring is a fake, a copy of the original that sits in a museum in Jerusalem.

In fact, most of the artifacts in Girona are copies. Virtually nothing is left from the community that once lived here, save for the tombstones excavated from the nearby Jewish cemetery. The few artifacts from the period that have survived are generally beyond the museum's financial ability to acquire.

“Once in a while we can buy something, but it's not as often as we would like,” said Assumpcio Hosta, the director of Patronat Call de Girona, the municipal body responsible for the preservation of Girona's Jewish heritage. “It costs a lot of money.”

That difficulty hasn't stopped nearly two dozen cities and towns throughout Spain from trying to capitalize on their Jewish history, building monuments and hosting concerts, lectures and other cultural activities inspired by one of the most productive and accomplished Jewish communities in history.