Corridor: Via Egnatia, Western Trans-Balkan Road
Country: Greece, Veroia
Type: Jewish religious centre, Vernacular Architecture
Epoch: Modern Times
Theme: Vernacular Architecture
World Heritage:

Veroia, a small town in Northern Greece, has a very long history dating from Antiquity. Veroia, located only about one-hour’s drive from Thessaloniki was one of the cities that St. Paul the Apostle visited during his second trip to Greece, in the 1st century AD. The Jewish community of Veroia, which received St. Paul at its synagogue, dates from Antiquity. It was a Romaniot community, which grew further after the 15th century, and the arrival of the Sefardi Jews from the Iberian peninsula.
The almost completely preserved Jewish quarter, called Barbouta, dates from the early and mid-19th century. It is of a defensive and introverted typology, where the houses are built around an open courtyard, with access only through two gates that used to be locked at night. The houses communicated among them with doors that opened from one to the other, without being exposed to the common courtyard. The Jewish quarter is located west of the Byzantine walls of Veroia and adjacent to the sloping banks of the Tripotamos River, both of which form a second layer of defense to the protected quarter. This protective and introverted arrangement is common to the Jewish and Greek Orthodox quarters of the Ottoman Empire prior to the Tanzimat Reforms that led to the emancipation of the Ottoman Jews and other minorities (1839-1856).

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