Jubilee Synagogue

Turn off the main road and the street narrows into an ordinary row of pale Prague facades. Then, without warning, a wall of colour rises in front of you. Bands of red and cream brick run across it like stripes on a woven blanket. Horseshoe arches curve over the doors. Painted ornament climbs toward the roofline in greens, golds and deep reds. After the grey and ochre of the surrounding streets, it looks almost out of place.

This is the Jubilee Synagogue, also called the Jerusalem Synagogue after the street it stands on, Jeruzalémská. It is the largest synagogue in Prague. Most visitors to the city find the Jewish Quarter across the river in the Old Town, with its famous cemetery and old prayer halls. Far fewer find this building, a short walk from the main railway station. That makes it one of the best surprises in the city.

The building is young by Prague standards. It was built in the first decade of the twentieth century and consecrated in 1906. Its name honours a royal anniversary. In 1908, Emperor Franz Joseph the First marked sixty years on the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which then ruled Bohemia. The Jewish community of Prague named its new synagogue in honour of that jubilee. It was a gesture of loyalty from a community that had gained full civil rights under his reign.

There is a second, quieter story behind the building. Around the turn of the century, the city cleared large parts of the old Jewish Quarter. Narrow lanes, crowded houses and several small synagogues were demolished to make way for wide new streets. Families moved out to newer districts like this one. They needed a place to pray. This synagogue was built partly to replace the prayer halls that the clearance had taken away.

The design came from Wilhelm Stiassny, an architect based in Vienna who designed many Jewish buildings across the empire. Look at the style. It mixes two very different ideas. The first is Moorish Revival, a nineteenth-century European fashion that borrowed the arches and patterns of Islamic Spain. The second is Art Nouveau, the flowing, plant-like decorative style that swept through Prague and Vienna at the same time.

Why look to Spain? For many Jewish communities in Central Europe, the Moorish style recalled the medieval era in Spain, when Jewish culture flourished there. It also set a synagogue apart from the Gothic churches and Baroque palaces around it. The building does not try to blend in. It announces itself. Stand back and notice how the striped brickwork pulls your eye upward toward the large round window in the centre of the facade.

That round window holds a Star of David at its heart. Above the entrance, look for a line of Hebrew lettering. It is a verse from the prophet Malachi, which asks, in essence: have we not all one father, has not one God created us? It is a fitting line for a building that honoured a Catholic emperor. It speaks of shared origins rather than division, and it greets everyone who walks through the door.

Now step inside, and the colour continues. The interior is a tall hall with galleries running along the sides. Traditionally these upper galleries were for women, while men sat on the ground floor. Painted stencil patterns cover the walls and arches. Gilded details catch the light from the windows. At the far end stands the Torah ark, the cabinet that holds the sacred scrolls, framed by decoration that draws every eye toward it.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Look for the organ. An organ in a synagogue may surprise you, because many Orthodox congregations do not use instruments in worship. Its presence tells you something about the community that built this place. Many Prague Jews in that era followed a more liberal, modernising tradition. Their services took on some features of Central European musical life, while keeping the Hebrew prayers at the centre.

The darkest chapter came during the Second World War. Nazi Germany occupied Prague, and the Jewish community of the city was deported and murdered in huge numbers. Many synagogues across Europe were destroyed. This one survived, but for a grim reason. The occupiers used it as a warehouse for property confiscated from Jewish families. The building that once held prayers held the stolen belongings of the people who had prayed here.

After the war, a small community returned. Under the communist government that followed, religious life was difficult and the building aged without proper care. Restoration work in later decades brought the colours back to life. Today the synagogue still belongs to the Jewish Community of Prague. It remains a working house of prayer, not only a museum. That is worth remembering as you walk through. People still come here to worship and to mark the holidays.

Upstairs in the galleries, there is usually an exhibition about Jewish life in Prague and the wider Czech lands. It tells the stories of communities beyond the famous Old Town quarter. Many of these smaller communities, in towns and villages across Bohemia and Moravia, did not survive the war at all. Their synagogues were lost or turned to other uses. Take a few minutes with these displays. They give the bright hall below its full weight.

When you leave, pause on the pavement and look back once more. Notice how the trams and traffic of the New Town move past without slowing, as they have for more than a century. Notice the plain buildings on either side, and how the striped facade still holds its colour against them. A royal anniversary, a cleared neighbourhood, a war and a long recovery all left their marks on this one quiet street. Then walk on slowly, and let the colours stay with you.