Specialty coffee in Trani

Not a single Jew lives in Trani today, and yet there is a synagogue here reckoned to be the oldest still in use in Europe. The building went up in the thirteenth century; in 1380 it was taken from the community and turned into the church of Santa Maria in Scolanova - by the middle of the sixteenth century the same fate had met all four of the town's synagogues, and the Jews who remained were baptized by force. The church only gave the building back in 2006, but refused to take down the old image of the Madonna that hangs in the niche left by the aron hakodesh. So the community covers it with a large image of a menorah, and that is probably the shortest possible description of seven hundred years of this town's history.