The Synagogue of Tomar is Portugal's oldest surviving synagogue, and for most of its life it wasn't a synagogue at all. Built between 1430 and 1460 for a Jewish community that made up nearly 40 per cent of the town's population, it served its intended purpose for barely three decades before Manuel I's expulsion decree in 1496 shut the doors. What followed was a remarkably undignified series of second careers: prison, Catholic chapel, hayloft, grocery warehouse. Clay jars embedded in the vaulted ceiling, designed to fine-tune the acoustics for religious chanting, spent centuries absorbing the sounds of stored grain instead.

In 1923, Polish-Jewish engineer Samuel Schwarz bought the building and donated it to the Portuguese state, receiving citizenship in return, a deal that likely saved his life during the Holocaust. It now houses the Abraham Zacuto Museum, named for the astronomer whose navigational tools helped Vasco da Gama find his way to India.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours through Tomar place the synagogue within the story of the Knights Templar, tracing how the order actively recruited Jewish settlers to build the town's economy, and explaining the bitter irony of a community invited by crusaders only to be expelled by a king.