Churches & monasteries

Old Synagogue in Kraków

At 24 Szeroka Street stands the oldest preserved synagogue in Poland and one of the most valuable monuments of Jewish sacral architecture in Europe. This Gothic-Renaissance, two-aisled hall served as the main synagogue of Kraków's Jewish community until 1939 and today houses a branch of the Museum of Kraków with an exhibition on the history and culture of Kraków's Jews.

Late Gothic around 1500

The temple was probably built by Bohemian Jews who fled to Kraków after the Prague pogrom of 1389; sources give the dates 1407 or 1492, and scholars now favour the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. The building combined sacral and defensive functions — its eastern wall adjoined the city fortifications. Besides Kraków, only Worms, Regensburg and Prague had medieval synagogues of this two-aisled type.

Fires, Gucci, Kościuszko

In 1557 a great fire destroyed the building; the Florentine architect Mateo Gucci rebuilt it, giving it a Renaissance character while preserving the two-aisled plan and the rib vault. The last fire came in 1773. Tadeusz Kościuszko delivered a speech here, calling on the Jews to fight for the freedom of their shared homeland.

War and the museum

During the occupation the Germans devastated the interior: they carried off silver and textiles and placed valuable candlesticks in Governor Hans Frank's residence on Wawel. On 28 October 1943 thirty Poles were shot by the synagogue walls. The building was handed over for museum purposes in 1958, and the restoration was completed by 1959. Inside, note the two slender Tuscan columns supporting the vault and the surviving fragments of wall paintings from 1886. In summer the terraces in front of the synagogue host the main concert of the Jewish Culture Festival.