Europe’s Most Beautiful Synagogues: The Stadttempel, Vienna.
The Stadttempel (English: City Temple) was built between 1824-1826 in a Neo-Classical design.
The luxurious and elegant synagogue was built into a block of houses hidden from plain sight, due to an order by Emperor Joseph II permitting only Roman Catholic places of worship to front directly to public streets. That order ultimately saved the synagogue during the November Pogroms of 1938 (Kristallnacht) because it could not be destroyed without setting the rest of the buildings on fire.
Therefore, it was the only synagogue in Vienna to have survived WWII out of 94 synagogues.
A memorial for the victims of the Holocaust was installed inside the synagogue in 2002, commemorating the names of 65,000 Austrian Jews murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.
Note! Visiting the synagogue is possible only with a guided tour, and only once a day at 10am.
Address: Seitenstettengasse 4, Vienna, Austria.
Below are more Synagogues from the series:
