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Joseph Avis, a Quaker carpenter, was commissioned to build the first synagogue in England following the readmission of Jews in 1656: the synagogue of London’s Spanish and Portuguese community, on…
The Scuola Grande Tedesca is the oldest of five synagogues in the Venetian ghetto and was built in 1528 by the local Ashkenazic community. Although only its five windows are visible from the street…
There were once hundreds of wooden synagogues in Poland and Lithuania, but only a very few examples of this particularly Jewish form of architecture have survived. The Zabłudów synagogue, built around…
This print depicting a service in the synagogue in Fürth is from the beginning of the eighteenth century, a period of prosperity for the city’s Jewish community. There were between 350 and 400 Jewish…
The Old Synagogue (Alte-Schul, or Stara Bożnica) of Kraków is located in the Kazimierz district of the city. Because it was in a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth vulnerable to attack by…
The Scuola Italiana is one of five synagogues in the Venetian ghetto, and its smallest. In 1575, the Italian Jewish community established the synagogue in a preexisting building because of a law…
This wooden Torah ark and its two cathedrae (chairs), from the Scuola Grande Synagogue in Mantua, Italy, date from 1543. Decorated with gilt carvings and architectural elements, they were meant to…
The Vittorio Veneto Synagogue, in a town near Venice, was constructed on the second and third floors of a modest house. Elements of the Italian Baroque style are visible in the interior, especially in…
The Isaac (or Izaak) Synagogue in Kraków was built in 1638–1644. Sources differ about who designed the building, but it was likely either the Italian architect Francisco Olivieri or Swiss-born…
The Scuola Levantina (Levantine Synagogue), a Sephardic synagogue built in 1541, was restored in the late seventeenth century. The bimah is thought to have been carved by Andrea Brustolon, famed for…
