A former synagogue in the town of Prostĕjov is for sale, for a bit more than €210,000. The synagogue, listed as a cultural monument, dates from around 1836.
It served as a bet midrash and then the town’s main synagogue until World War II. After the war, and the destruction of the local Jewish community, it was used as a warehouse and then as an Orthodox church, which in turn sold it to private owners . It has stood empty for years.
The Open Reality web site listed it earlier this year and priced it at 5,549,000 Czech crowns, or about €217,000.
Around a year ago, according to local media, the private owners attempted to sell the building to the city for a higher price, and then rejected a much lower bid from the city.
The Open Reality listing describes it as “a unique building with a historical touch and a wide range of possible uses” including “as prestigious offices, for holding exhibitions, a yoga center or as a luxurious private residence. An important advantage is the separate entrance to the building, which leads to the 2+1 apartment unit with its own bathroom and which can serve as a profitable investment for possible rental.”
The National Monuments Catalogue describes the building as ” part of the only intact block of houses of the former Jewish ghetto” and a “remarkable building both for its finely crafted Empire architecture and historically, as evidence of the spiritual life of the Jewish community in Prostějov since the end of the 18th century.”
It is built on a rectangular floor plan, roofed with a gable roof covered with burnt tiles. The longer street frontage has 7 window axes, both extreme axes are highlighted by shallow ridges, on the ground floor of the ridges there are entrance portals, of which the right one is blind, filled with a window. The facade is divided by a horizontally profiled cordon cornice and a window cornice below the large windows on the first floor. The [facade protrusions] are flanked by pilasters with Corinthian capitals and vertical bands divided by rustication, they are topped by triangular gables. The windows of the 1st floor, where the main hall of the prayer hall is, are large rectangular ones built vertically, with semicircular arched skylights separated by masonry. The portals on the ground floor have ovoid and foliate decorated stone facings […] and are topped by triangular pediments with palmettes in the corners. […] The windows on the first floor have the same semicircular skylights as on the east facade, but the windows are smaller and the central axis is blind. The facade is topped by a triangular gable, lower than the gable of the gable roof.
Read an article in local media
See the monuments Catalogue listing
See Center for Jewish Art photo documentation
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