Synagogue

Dohány Street Synagogue, Budapest, Hungary

This is a detail of the ceiling inside Dohány Street Synagogue is also known as The Great Synagogue or Tabakgasse Synagogue. The beautiful building is located in the 7th district of Budapest, Hugary. It is the largest synagogue in Europe and the fifth largest in the world. It seats 3,000 people and is a centre of Neolog Judaism.


The synagogue was built between 1854 and 1859 in the Moorish Revival style, with the decoration based chiefly on Islamic models from North Africa and medieval Spain (the Alhambra). The synagogue's Viennese architect, Ludwig Förster, believed that no distinctively Jewish architecture could be identified, and thus chose "architectural forms that have been used by oriental ethnic groups that are related to the Israelite people, and in particular the Arabs".

The Dohány Street Synagogue complex consists of the Great Synagogue, the Heroes' Temple, the graveyard, the Holocaust memorial and the Jewish Museum, which was built on the site on which Theodore Herzl's house of birth once stood. Dohány Street itself, a leafy street in the city center, carries strong Holocaust connotations as it constituted the border of the Budapest Ghetto.