It has a new interactive exhibit on the past 2 centuries of Czech Jewish history.
(JHE) — After being closed for 18 months for extensive repair and restoration, Prague’s Spanish Synagogue (part of the Prague Jewish Museum) reopens to the public on December 16 with a newly designed permanent Jewish history exhibition that uses audio visual material and interactive technology.
The new exhibition, called Jews in the Czech Lands in the 19th and 20th Centuries, will “take the visitor through the history of the immense upheavals that the Czech and Moravian Jewish community has gone through in the past two centuries,” including the post-WW2 communist period, Jewish Museum Director Leo Pavlat said in an announcement of the reopening.
After an equality that was supposed to make Jews forget centuries of discrimination, civic emancipation offered them full participation in society. This promising boom ended in the Shoah apocalypse, the death of two-thirds of Jews living in the Czech lands. Hopes for a fresh start after the war were dashed by the anti-Semitic communist regime. All this, based on unique Judaica and other three-dimensional exhibits, documents, films and photographs, can be experienced by the visitor during a tour of the exhibition, in which we used innovative audiovisual and interactive elements with respect to the synagogue’s unique space.
It will continue to be used for classical concerts and other cultural events.
Costs of the project amounted to “several tens of millions of crowns,” the museum said. Besides the new exhibition, it entailed expansion of the exhibition space, creating barrier-free access, and carrying out some physical reconstruction.
Some interior elements were repaired within the project, part of the perimeter masonry was dehumidified, and the climatic conditions inside the building were improved. Following the construction work and modifications, restoration work was carried out, new showcases and digital kiosks containing audiovisual elements were installed.”
The Spanish Synagogue was built in 1868 for the local Reform congregation on the site of the 12th-century Altschul (Old Shul). It is called “Spanish” because of its elaborate Moorish interior design, influenced by the Alhambra. The building was designed by Josef Niklas and Jan Bělský, the sumptuous interior (from 1882–83) by Antonín Baum and Bedřich Münzberger.
During WW2, the Nazi occupiers used it as a warehouse for confiscated synagogue items from Czech Jewish communities. The Jewish Museum, then run by the communist state, acquired it in 1955.
The Museum describes the architecture of the synagogue:
The one-storey building of the synagogue itself has a square floor plan. The main hall with a dome above the central space is surrounded on three sides by a built-in gallery on metal structures. The organ is located in the south gallery. In the eastern wall of the synagogue there is a round window with stained glass in the form of a six-pointed star (from 1882–1883) and aron ha-kodesh (tabernacle). A distinctive element of the interior is the stucco gilded and polychrome arabesque, which is inspired by oriental decorative art and architecture. Stylized oriental motifs are repeated on the walls and in the carving decoration of doors, railings and galleries.
In 1935, a functionalist building was added to the synagogue according to the project of the architect Karel Pecánek, which served as a hospital after the Second World War. The synagogue extension was located in a part of the building with the connection of the vestibule and the winter prayer room to the older synagogue. In this form, the synagogue has remained virtually unchanged to this day.
The Prague Jewish Museum is going through a process of overhauling its permanent exhibits, which are housed in former synagogues. The work on the Spanish Synagogue is the fourth revitalization project in this process. Earlier work included the renovation of the Pinkas Synagogue (2018) and Maisel Synagogue (2015) and the opening of the Information and Reservation Centre (2014).