The synagogues, art nouveau Camondo steps and apartment buildings owned by Jewish families in the posh street of Serdar-i Ekrem — the 2019 edition of the European Day of Jewish Culture in Istanbul opened Sunday, Nov. 24, with a morning walk through the Jewish landmarks of Galata.

The Galata neighborhood was built and fortified by Italian merchants from Genoa in the Middle Ages on a steep hill overlooking the Golden Horn. Then it gradually acquired a sizable Jewish population of both Spanish and Eastern European origins. In the 19th century, it evolved into the financial center of the Ottoman Empire, where bankers and traders prospered. Nowadays the Jews of Istanbul — around 20,000 — live all over the city, but Galata is where their history and heritage are the most immediately visible, in religious structures as well as in private palaces.

Back at the synagogue and cultural center of Neve Shalom (which means oasis or valley of peace), opened in 1952 just under the shadow of the Galata tower, visitors were welcomed by a dense program of talks ranging from Jewish cinema to the Holocaust, concerts presenting both sacred and tango music and exhibitions depicting religious rituals and ancestral lands through photos and figurative patchworks.

Even lunch was a cultural experience, a degustation true to tradition: signature dishes of the Sephardim — Jews of Spanish ancestry — such as a cold tomato and rice stew called “armi de tomat,” meatballs with leeks, “kashkarikas” made of squash peels, aniseed biscuits or pastries with Turkish delight for dessert.