Vienna City Temple (Stadttempel)

Synagogue · Innere Stadt (1st)Vienna,Austria

A synagogue built inside a Vienna apartment block in 1826 because non-Catholic prayer houses could not face the street, which is why it survived 1938.

The Vienna City Temple is a synagogue you cannot see from the street. Josef Kornhäusel built it in 1825 and 1826 inside a block of flats on Seitenstettengasse, at a time when a non-Catholic house of prayer was not allowed to show itself on a public front. What he fitted into the courtyard is an oval hall ringed by twelve Ionic columns, with the women's gallery carried on them and seating for around seven hundred. The concealment decided the building's fate. On 10 November 1938 nineteen of Vienna's synagogues were destroyed and seven badly damaged. This one was wrecked inside, but the shell stood, because the neighbouring houses were built hard against it and burning one meant burning them all. In August 1981 gunmen attacked a bar mitzvah here and two people were killed. That is why police stand in the lane, why you need a passport and a booked place on a tour, and why the door is otherwise closed.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Book the tour days ahead and carry your passport — Entry is by guided visit only, through the Jewish community office, and there is airport-style screening at the door that a driving licence will not satisfy.
The tower next door is the same architect's — Kornhäusel raised his own studio three floors above the stairwell at Seitenstettengasse 2, and the tower stayed hidden from the street until 1910.
Men are handed a head covering at the door — Everyone is expected to dress as for a house of prayer rather than a museum, and photography inside is not permitted.
Ask the guide what the community does here now — This is the seat of Vienna's Jewish community, not a monument, and the answer separates a living congregation from a museum.

Things to do

1
Try to spot the synagogue from the lane
Walk the length of Seitenstettengasse and pick which house it is before you look at the numbers. The answer is that you cannot, because the front was built to be a house. Doing this before the tour turns the concealment from a fact you are told into one you have tested.
2
Stand under the gallery and look up
Once inside the oval hall, place yourself under the balcony rather than in the middle. From there you see how the twelve columns carry the gallery and how little the room needs the walls. The whole plan is a solution to having no street front, and from that spot the solution is visible.
3
Read the names on the wall outside
The memorial wall stands in the open air and asks nothing of you but time. Look for repeated surnames rather than reading top to bottom; families appear in blocks. Ten minutes here is the part of this record that needs no booking, no passport and no security check.