Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella joined Jewish leaders, other civic and government officials, Holocaust survivors, and local Jews as guest of honor at a crowded ceremony December 5 celebrating the 120th anniversary of the Tempio Maggiore — the grand Great Synagogue on the bank of the Tiber River in Rome.
Welcoming Mattarella in his speech, Rome Jewish community president Victor Fadlun stressed that the synagogue is a symbol of Jewish life, pride, and resilience in the Eternal City, which has a Jewish presence dating back more than 2000 years.
“We are b’nai Romi’ — children of Rome,” he said. “Proudly Italian and proudly Jewish.”
The synagogue, he said, was “the symbol of the emancipation of the Jews of Rome and the reconquest of our rights and duties as citizens.” It was the place, he said, in which “we met to reaffirm our will to exist and resist, our resilience during the [Fascist antisemitic] racial laws, the Nazizfascist persecution and occupation.”
Located in the old ghetto area where Papal edicts forced Jews to live from 1555 until 1870, the towering synagogue, with a soaring squared dome, was designed in a lavish eclectic style, with Byzantine motifs, by Vincenzo Costa and Osvaldo Armanni. It was inaugurated in 1904 following the demolition of the old historic ghetto as part of urban renewal. Pope John Paul II’s visit there in 1986 was a milestone in Catholic-Jewish dialogue.
It was not Mattarella’s first visit to the synagogue. He also attended a ceremony in 2022 marking the 40th anniversary of a Palestinian terrorist attack in 1982 that killed a young child and injured scores of worshippers.
The monumental synagogue complex today includes a small Sephardic Synagogue in the basement, and also the Rome Jewish Museum.
Watch a video from Mattarella’s office, with highlights of the ceremony:
Read an interview with an architect about the history of the synagogue