On a summer’s day in 1476, a scribe called Moses Ibn Zabarah put the finishing touches to an enormous and magnificently illustrated Hebrew Bible, commissioned by the son of a wealthy Jewish family from Galicia in northwestern Spain. The Bible, whose pages teem with dragons, monkeys, peacocks, intricate geometric patterns, and an alarmed Jonah entering the whale’s mouth, took 10 months to complete.

Sixteen years later, Spain’s Jews were ordered to leave the country by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. The expulsion cast the family and their precious Bible into exile. From Spain, the book was taken to Portugal, North Africa, Gibraltar and Scotland before finally ending up in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

And now, after more than 500 years, the book is finally coming home…for a visit. The Kennicott Bible, named after Benjamin Kennicott, the scholar and librarian on whose advice the work was bought by Oxford University, has been loaned to the regional government of Galicia, and will be on display in Santiago de Compostela until April 2020.

Despite the Kennicott’s Galician heritage and global renown, the region has no plans to ask for its permanent return, said Roman Rodriguez, minister for culture and tourism in the regional government. “It’s Galician, no matter where it is,” he said.