Toledo's synagogues were built by Muslim craftsmen for Jewish patrons, and the wealth that paid for the finer of the two eventually cost its patron his life.
Islamic style, Jewish patronage
Both surviving synagogues, Santa Maria la Blanca and El Transito, were built in the Mudejar style, using horseshoe arches, carved stucco and geometric patterning characteristic of Islamic architecture in medieval Iberia, executed by Muslim craftsmen working for Jewish clients under Christian rule, a layering of three religious traditions in a single building that reflects Toledo's unusually mixed medieval population more directly than almost any comparable site.
A treasurer's ambition
El Transito was commissioned by Samuel ha-Levi, treasurer to King Pedro I of Castile, and its elaborate stucco decoration and Hebrew inscriptions praising both God and the king reflect the wealth and royal favour ha-Levi had accumulated in his position. That favour did not protect him: Pedro later had ha-Levi arrested, tortured and put to death, reportedly to seize his accumulated fortune, a downfall that came only years after the synagogue's completion.
Converted, not destroyed
After the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain, both buildings were converted into churches, which paradoxically preserved their physical structures largely intact rather than seeing them demolished, so their return to recognition as former synagogues in more recent centuries has been a matter of restoring known history rather than rediscovering a lost building.