The oldest synagogue in the Jewish Quarter, the Ramban Synagogue is named after the great Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman (1194-1270), known as Nachmanides or the Ramban.
In 1267 he was saddened when he visited a devastated Jerusalem, and met only two Jews who worked as painters. "Great is the neglect and vast is the destruction... The entire Temple is utterly ruined, Jerusalem is thoroughly destroyed... And we found a house in ruins built with marble columns and a beautiful dome and we took it to the synagogue because the city is abandoned and anyone who wishes to take from the ruins can help himself," he wrote in a letter to his son.
The Ramban Synagogue was apparently originally built on Mount Zion, where the Jews of Jerusalem had lived previously, and was moved to its current location when the Jews entered the Jewish Quarter in the 14th-century. For many years this was the only synagogue in the city, and it matches the description given by Rabbi Ovadia of Bartenura (1440-1530) during his visit to Jerusalem in the 15th-century: "The synagogue in Jerusalem is built upon columns, and it is long and narrow and dark, and it has no light except from a single opening, and inside there is a water cistern."
The synagogue was closed in 1589 by order of the Ottoman ruler, and reopened for prayer after Israel recaptured the Old City in 1967, which happened to be the 700th anniversary year of the Ramban's visit to Israel.
