The history of Kazimierz has witnessed centuries of close proximity between Jews and Christians. At the end of the 15th century, an autonomous city was founded and surrounded by walls here, destined to welcome the Jews confined by Krakow: the so-called oppidum iudaeorum. The current Szeroka Street was centrally located. Numerous synagogues, Jewish schools, universities and institutions were built in the surrounding area. For centuries the city was one of the most important Jewish cultural and spiritual centers in Europe. In the 16th century, the illustrious scholar and rector of the Talmudic Academy Moshe Isserles, commonly called Remuh, lived there. His supposedly miraculous tomb is still a destination for Jewish pilgrimages from all over the world. In the following century, in the attic of the synagogue at 22 Szeroka Street, the scholar Rabbi Natan Spira used to study Jewish Kabbalah by candlelight. When the candle went out in 1633, the rabbi died, it is said, of exhaustion. In the 19th century, incorporated into the city of Krakow, Kazimierz transformed into an Orthodox centre and a destination for Jewish pilgrimages from all over the Republic. In 1822 the walls surrounding the Jewish quarter were demolished and Jews were able to settle freely throughout the Kazimierz area. In the 1930s Jews made up a quarter of Krakow's population. During the Second World War we witnessed the extermination and diaspora of the city's Jewish community.