New multimedia infrastructure for tourists and other visitors has been installed in the beautiful Art Nouveau synagogue in Subotica, in a move officials said marked the final, full completion of the years-long process of restoring the building.
At an event at the synagogue this week, the Subotica Synagogue Foundation unveiled multi-language audio guides and interactive video screens, as well as a ramp allowing wheelchair access.
“This completes the complete renovation of the 120-year-old building,” the Foundation’s head Balint Pastor, who presented the new equipment, said in a Facebook post.
Pasztor, who is a Serbian MP and president of the Subotica City Assembly, said the touch-screen video stations allowed access to many photos and digitized documents that “show the history of the city and the local Jewish people, prominent figures of Jewish origin in our economic and cultural life, history Subotica synagogue, its construction, decay and renovation.”
The material on the screens — and via two dozen new audio guides — will be available in seven languages: Serbian, Hungarian, Coatian, English, German, Hebrew, and Bunjevec (spoken by a local minority group).
The Foundation said the new systems can be accessed by the blind or visually impaired.
Watch a Serbian TV report about the event unveiling the new infrastructure:
This year marks the 120th anniversary of the Subotica synagogue, which was dedicated in 1902 — when the town, known in Hungarian as Szabadka, was part of Austro-Hungary. It was designed by the Budapest-based architects Dezső Jakab and Marcell Komor, who also designed the town hall and the buildings of the park in Palić, outside of town.
After decades of fitful starts and setbacks was rededicated in 2018 after restoration whose final phases were funded by the Hungarian government.
Click to see a World Monuments Fund online exhibition about the synagogue.
Click to see our recent “Anniversary of Anniversaries” post about the synagogue
Click to see more pictures and read more about the restoration