Dohány Street Synagogue

Interesting facts

Manhattan's Central Synagogue, built in the 1870s, was modelled on the Moorish design of the Dohány Street Synagogue.

Its seats are split almost evenly, with 1,492 places for men on the floor and 1,472 for women in the galleries.

The original 1859 organ had about 5,000 pipes; its 1996 successor has four manuals and 63 stops.

On 3 February 1939 the building was bombed by members of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party.

During the German occupation the synagogue was used as a radio base and even as a stable.

Actor Tony Curtis, son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants, and Estée Lauder were among the donors who funded its restoration.

The Heroes' Temple, added in 1931 beside the main building, honours Hungarian Jewish soldiers of the First World War and seats about 250.

At its highest point the building reaches about 43.6 metres, and its central nave alone is 12 metres wide.

The courtyard cemetery where ghetto victims were buried covers some 3,000 square metres.

Why it is worth it

Budapest's great synagogue on Dohány Street is the largest in Europe and one of the largest working synagogues anywhere. It was built in 1854–1859 for the city's Neolog congregation, the reform-minded branch of Hungarian Jewry, and consecrated on 6 September 1859. The architect Ludwig Förster designed the building, and the Hungarian Frigyes Feszl shaped much of the interior. Förster deliberately reached for oriental forms, which he associated with the peoples related to the ancient Israelites, and the result became one of the defining buildings of the Moorish Revival.

Seen from the street, the façade is a composition in yellow and red brick, patterned in bands, with a rose window over the entrance and two octagonal towers crowned with onion domes some 43 metres high. The interior is vast: 75 metres long and 27 wide, with a nave spanned by cast iron, seats for nearly three thousand people — men below, women in the galleries — and a richly painted and gilded surface of arabesques and geometric ornament. The synagogue has an organ, unusual for a synagogue and a sign of its Neolog character; the original instrument of 1859 was played by Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns, and a new organ by Jehmlich of Dresden replaced it in 1996.

Around the main building a whole memorial complex has grown. The smaller Heroes' Temple was added in 1931, and the Hungarian Jewish Museum stands on the site of the house where Theodor Herzl was born. In the winter of 1944–45 the synagogue lay inside the Budapest ghetto, and some two thousand people who died there are buried in its courtyard — a rare cemetery beside a synagogue. Behind, in the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park, Imre Varga's metal weeping willow carries the names of victims on its leaves. After decades of neglect the building was restored between 1991 and 1998.

Getting there

The synagogue stands on Dohány utca in central Budapest, on the edge of the old Jewish quarter, about 1 km from the centre of the sixth district. Astoria station on metro line M2 is a short walk away. Budapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD) is about 17 km away.

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From the encyclopaedia

The Dohány Street Synagogue, also known as the Great Synagogue or Tabakgasse Synagogue, is a Neolog Jewish congregation and synagogue, located on Dohány Street in Erzsébetváros of Budapest, Hungary. It is the largest synagogue in Europe, seating 3,000 people, and is a centre of Neolog Judaism. The congregation worships in the Ashkenazi rite.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

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