Old-New Synagogue

Synagogue · Josefov (Old Town), Červená / MaiselovaPrague,Czechia

A small dark twin-nave Gothic hall in Prague, in use since about 1270 and the oldest working synagogue in Europe.

The Old-New Synagogue is small, dark and low, and it has been in use since about 1270. It is a twin-nave Gothic hall — two rows of vaults carried on a pair of central pillars — and the oldest surviving building of that plan anywhere. An iron grille rings the reading platform in the middle, and a red banner granted by Charles IV in 1358 hangs above it. Women follow the service from annexes at the side, through narrow openings in the wall. Prague's community still holds its services here, so this is a working synagogue with a visiting hour rather than a monument. What it has outlived is the point: it stood through the clearance of the Jewish quarter in the 1890s and through the German occupation, when the community around it did not. Its name comes from a legend about stones brought from the Temple in Jerusalem, and it is a pun that only works across two languages. The attic is closed, and has always been closed.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Men are given a head covering at the door and are expected to wear it — Services take priority over visiting, so the hall closes for prayer and on Saturdays and Jewish holidays.
Find the banner and read its age, not its cloth — The community's right to carry a flag was granted by Charles IV in 1358, which is unusually early for a formal privilege of that kind.
Give your eyes a minute inside — The windows are small and set high, and the room was never built for daylight, so the carving and the grille only appear once you have adjusted.
Come at opening or late in the day — The hall is genuinely small, and twenty people standing in it is a full room, which makes the middle hours a shuffle.

Things to do

1
Count the ribs in one bay, then in all of them
Stand under one bay of the vault and count the ribs meeting at the boss. There are five. Walk the length of the hall checking each bay and you will find it every time. It is the clearest evidence anywhere in Prague that a medieval building can be designed against a convention on purpose.
2
Look for the women's openings in the wall
Walk the side of the hall and find the narrow slots cut through the wall at low level. Women followed the service from annexes behind them, hearing more than they saw. Put your eye to one and judge how much of the reading platform is actually visible from there.
3
Step outside and look at what is around it
Come out and turn a full circle in the street. Everything you can see is a hundred years younger than the synagogue: tall apartment blocks put up in the clearance of the 1890s. The quarter this building belonged to is gone, and the building is what is left of it.