The restoration of the 19th century synagogue in Duppigheim, Alsace, has been completed, and the synagogue will be used as a center for intergenerational educational and cultural activities.
Mayor Julien Haegy invited the public to Saturday’s official inauguration, saying that the municipality had been “keen to revive the old synagogue.” The building will become “a place reinvented as a space of cultural and heritage that finds a voice for transmission of skills, of knowledge, of dynamism of free time [activities].”
He said an association was being created to manage activities.
Local media said the cost of the work was €529 930.
Designed by an architect named Beyer, the synagogue was inaugurated in November 1877 to replace an earlier synagogue.
The Jewish community was dissolved in 1940 by the German occupiers, and the synagogue was ransacked during WW2. After the war, ownership reverted to the Jewish Consistoire, which ceded it to the municipality in 1954. It was used as a warehouse and from 1984 as a fire station.
According to France’s Heritage Foundation, which was a partner with the city in the restoration project, work included refurbishment of massive stone elements, the restructuring of the interior of the ground floor and the removal of “interventions that had damaged the integrity of the building.”
The municipality posted several “before and after” pictures on its Facebook page:
Click to see an Instagram video of the restoration work in progress
See the project on the Heritage Foundation web site
See posts about the project on the Duppigheim city Facebook page