In this region, you can visit ancient synagogues in Bardejov, Kosice and especially the sublime Presov synagogue. Unfortunately, there are fewer traces of Jewish life in Stropkov.
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Szeged
Half a day will suffice to see the in Szeged, one of the most interesting ones in Hungary (1903). With its Baroque dome, Roman columns, and Byzantine-inspired bellows, the monumental building is a hymn to eclecticism. At the entrance, two plaques honor rabbis Lipot, a reform pioneer who was the first to deliver his sermons in Hungarian, and Immanuel Loew, son of the former, whose passion for ...
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Kecskemét
Kecskemét is worth a stop for its two synagogues. The largest is in (nineteenth-century) Romantic style. Today it houses the , where expositions and conferences are regularly held on technical subjects. The second contains a small . There’s also a in the city.
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Sátorajújhely
The region is famous for its rebbes, heads of Hasidic communities whose followers revered their thaumaturgical and magical powers. The city of Sátorajújhely, where 4,000 Jews lived in 1939, houses the mausoleum of Moses Teitelbaum. Born in Poland in 1759, he founded a dynasty of rebbes in Hungary, Galicia, and Romania. Every day, legend has it, Teitelbaum dressed in rags and climbed ...
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Mád
Built in 1795, the looms over the old Jewish quarter with its elegant white facade. With the Protestant church on the other side of the small valley, it symbolizes the religious balance of a large wine-making village, a quarter of whose inhabitants were Jews at the end of the nineteenth century. It represents a very beautiful and rare example of a Baroque synagogue in Hungary. The interior is ...
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Tokaj
In the seventeenth century, the Jews of Galicia and Silesia (modern-day Poland and Ukraine) were drawn to this region by trade in tokaj, a syrupy, amber-tinted wine very popular at the courts of Louis XIV and Peter of Russia. Jews gradually settled here, producing wine for Jews and non-Jews alike, and a crowd of other small trades followed subsequently. In this very Orthodox region, Hasidism ...
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Carpathian Foothills
This region of rolling hills punctuated by vineyards merits a two-day visit for memory’s sake. There remains, in fact, little evidence of Jewish life here, as most of it was eradicated by the Shoah.
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Sopron
Within this Baroque city, where splendid thirteenth-century houses have been transformed into museums, restoration projects have brought two medieval synagogues back to life. Built in the early thirteenth century, the on Uj street is the oldest one in Hungary. So closely does it resemble the one in Miltenberg (Bavaria) that historian Ferenc David suspects Sopron’s Jews originated there. ...
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Györ
The immense gray dome of stands out against the industrial landscape. Completed in 1870, the structure reflects the prosperity of the city’s Jewish middle class -lawyers, bankers, and manufacturers of German or Moravian origin. The massive bronze pillars supporting the octagonal building contrast with the subtlety of the eastern-inspired decor of the galleries, beams, and frescoes. The ...
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Budapest
Visiting Budapest requires at least three days. The capital was born from the unification of three cities: Buda and Óbuda on the western shore of the Danube, and Pest on the eastern shores. Although wars and urbanization have left few traces of the Jewish presence in Buda, Pest contains an old Jewish quarter that still houses a portion of the community. Buda “There are a few Jews here ...
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Piran
Piran is a former possession of the City of Doges, which explains its Venetian atmosphere. It contains some beautiful architecture, including a replica of the Campanile in the Piazza San Marco. This charming little coastal town has preserved its medieval ghetto square, Zidovski Trg, which can be entered through an arcade. The square is surrounded by several multistory houses that undeniably ...
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Italian border and Istria
Not one of the regions where Slovenian Jewish life was most intense, you’ll find traces of it in the towns of Koper, Nova Gorica, Piran and Stanjel.
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Central and Northeast Slovenia
In this region, there are few traces of Jewish life in Kidiricevo, Murska Sobota and Ptuj. However, Lendava and Maribor still have synagogues. The synagogue in Maribor is one of the oldest in Europe! As for Ljubljana, you’ll find a community centre there that was set up in 2013 and is very active, as its director explains on our page dedicated to the city.
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Eisenstadt
The region’s sovereigns, the Esterházy dukes of Hungary, granted the Jews special protection within the seven districts of Burgenland. Since 1670, the region has been one of the most important Jewish cultural centers of central Europe. The Jewish presence in Eisenstadt probably dates from the 14th century. A community finding refuge there from other cities but also expelled from it. But ...
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Trani
During the late Middle Ages, the city of Trani was home to a significant minority population of Jews. This community reached a high point during the thirteenth century. The giudecca of Trani was compact in size, diverse in architectural character, and largely open to the city around it, which indicates a specific form of coexistence. At the moment of its greatest physical expansion, we find ...
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San Nicandro
It was in San Nicandro that the first mass conversion to Judaism since the end of antiquity took place. All the converts emigrated to Israel shortly after 1948, so unfortunately there is nothing left in San Nicandro recalling this incredible story.
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Southern Italy
The communities of the southern peninsula were the wealthiest and best integrated in all of Italy during the Middle Ages. This was particularly true of Sicily, where more than 37,000 Jews lived, including a large number in Palermo. This is as many as are living in all of Italy today. The world of the Jews living under the Spanish crown was swept away within a few years after the forced ...
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Ancona
The Jews first arrived in Ancona around 1000 C.E. In the fourteenth century, the city hosted a significant Jewish community, whose activities were organized around the port and commerce with the Orient. In 1541, Pope Paul III encouraged Jews expelled from Naples and, in 1547, even the Marranos from Portugal to settle in Ancona, granting them protection from the Inquisition. A hundred or so ...
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Senigallia
The history of the Jews in Senigallia is similar to that of the Jews of Urbino or Pesaro. In the eighteenth century, the Jews numbered 600 of a total population of approximately 5,500 inhabitants. When French troops withdrew, the populace sacked the ghetto, killing thirteen Jews and forcing the others to flee to Ancona. In 1801, Pope Pius VII forced the Jews to return and rebuild their ...
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Urbino
The first traces of a Jewish presence in Urbino date to the fourteenth century, when Daniel of Viterbo received authorization to work as a banker and merchant. The Jewish community prospered under the liberal regime of Duke Federigo da Montrefeltro (1444-82), who was interested in Jewish culture and collected Hebrew manuscripts. This situation changed when the duchy came over the authority of ...
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Pesaro
Documents attest to a Jewish presence in Pesaro dating back to 1214. The expulsion of the Jews from the papal states in 1569 led numerous Jewish families to Pesaro, which became the most important center of Jewish life in the Duchy of Urbino. The annexation of the Duchy by the Pope radically changed the Jews’ situation. Three years later, in 1634, 500 Jews were forced to move into a ...
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The Marches
The presence of Jews in the Marches dates from as early as the twelfth century. The community developed especially after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, Sicily, and the Kingdom of Naples. There are still remains of Jewish streets and synagogues in a number of small towns in this region bordering the Adriatic coast. This area is off the beaten tourist path and very picturesque. The Jews were ...
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Trieste
A rich and influential Jewish community lived in Trieste, a large port city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that became Italian only after the First World War. During the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, this community had a profound impact of the economic and cultural life of the city. Enclosed in the ghetto in 1696, the Jews enjoyed a de facto emancipation ...
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Conegliano Veneto
In this little town, as in so many other towns in Venetia, there was a small but flourishing Jewish community. One can see the street of the former synagogue, whose interior ornaments and decoration were all sent to Israel after the war and installed in the Italian Temple Rehov Hillel in Jerusalem.
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Venice
On 20 March 1516, Zaccaria Dolfin, an influential Venetian patrician, announced a radical turn in the history of the Jew of the Serenissima: “It is necessary to send all the Jews (zudei) to stay in the geto novo, which is like a stronghold, and to make drawbridges and to surround it with wall so that there will be only one gate that will need to be monitored, and only the boats of the ...
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Padua
In the fourteenth century, Padua was one of the great centers of medieval Judaism, with a celebrated rabbinical academy where students from all over Europe came to study. These students were also attracted to Padua by its very old medical school, the only one to accept Jews as students. The Venetian conquest in 1405 obliged the Jews to sell their homes and lands and limited the interest rates ...
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Veneto
The Veneto region, as its name suggests, makes a visit to the mysterious and inspiring Venice a must, even inspiring a certain William Shakespeare to set several of his greatest plays there (Othello, The Merchant of Venice) without ever staying there. But that doesn’t make Verona jealous, since his most famous play, Romeo and Juliet, is set there. Palaces, artists, political intrigues, ...
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Mantua
Under the protection of the Gonzaga dukes, Jewish life flourished in the city of Mantua during the course of centuries. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, some 7,000 Jews lived in the city, representing 8% of the population. Nevertheless, the walls of the ghetto, established in 1612, fell only with the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte’s soldiers. Unfortunately, not much remains ...
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Soncino
The only noteworthy place of remembrance in the area surrounding Milan is the small town of Soncino in the province of Cremona. In the fifteenth century, a Hebrew printing house operated there, created by the rabbi and doctor Israel Nathan of Speyer, who was originally in this Rhenish city. The business was eventually forced to leave the duchy of Milan, but the Soncinos, the dynasty of ...
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Milan
The Jewish presence in Milan dates back to the Roman period. Hebrew inscriptions from this period have been found by archaeologists. A Milanese synagogue dated back to at least the 4th century, but it was destroyed by local residents. Milanese Jews continued to live there over the centuries. It was not until the 13th century, with the arrival of more Jews in the Lombardy region, that the ...
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