Ben Ezra Synagogue

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Egypt's oldest synagogue dates from the 9th century. In the 12th century, the synagogue was restored by rabbi Abraham Ben Ezra. Tradition marks this as the spot where the prophet Jeremiah gathered the Jews in the 6th century after Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed the Jerusalem temple. The adjacent spring is supposedly where the pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the reeds, and where Mary drew water to wash Jesus.

More recently, a cache of more than 250,000 documents, known as the Geniza, has revealed details of the life of the Jewish community around here from the 11th to 13th centuries.