Dohány Street Synagogue

The largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world, seating around three thousand.

It was built between 1854 and 1859 to a design by Ludwig Förster in a Moorish Revival style that owes far more to Islamic Spain than to any Jewish architectural tradition. That was the point: a nineteenth-century community with no architectural vocabulary of its own chose one that signalled antiquity and belonging, and built it on a boulevard rather than down a side street. The interior has an organ — unusual for a synagogue, and a marker of how thoroughly this congregation had assimilated.

Behind the building is the ground that makes a visit heavier than the architecture alone. The Wallenberg Memorial Park holds a mass grave for those who died in the Budapest ghetto in the winter of 1944–45, when the synagogue itself stood inside the ghetto walls. Above it is the Tree of Life memorial, a metal weeping willow whose every leaf carries a name.

The complex also contains the Hungarian Jewish Museum, built on the site of the house where Theodor Herzl was born, and the Heroes' Temple.

Entry is ticketed and includes the museum and the memorial garden. Allow more time than you think.