Rumbach Street Synagogue: Otto Wagner's Octagon
Why is it significant?
Turn to face the facade on Rumbach Sebestyén utca: stripes of colour, two slender minaret-like towers, horseshoe arches and Hebrew inscriptions. It looks almost too exotic for a narrow side street. And it was designed by a man who would later become one of the fathers of modern architecture.
Key Facts
| Place | Rumbach Street Synagogue: Otto Wagner's Octagon |
|---|---|
| Address | Rumbach Sebestyén utca 11-13, 1075 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.49790, 19.05890 |
| Part of Walk | Three Synagogues and a Tree of Life: Budapest's Jewish Quarter from Gozsdu to Dohány Street |
| Generated | Generated |
Turn to face the facade on Rumbach Sebestyén utca: stripes of colour, two slender minaret-like towers, horseshoe arches and Hebrew inscriptions. It looks almost too exotic for a narrow side street. And it was designed by a man who would later become one of the fathers of modern architecture.
The Rumbach Street Synagogue was built between 1869 and 1872, and its architect was the young Otto Wagner from Vienna. Decades later Wagner would design the Post Office Savings Bank and the metro stations of Vienna, stripped-down buildings that pointed the way to the twentieth century. Here he was still in his twenties, and he gave the community a Moorish fantasy built around an octagon, a centralised space crowned by a dome.
It belonged to the third of the communities you heard about on Kazinczy utca, the status quo ante Jews, who refused to join either the Neologs or the Orthodox after 1869. So within a few hundred metres, the quarter has three great synagogues, one for each answer to the same question: how to be Jewish in a modern city.
The war and the decades after it were cruel to this building. Under communism the congregation dwindled, and the building was sold, half-converted, left empty and sealed off. For years it was a shell, its paint peeling, birds flying through the dome.
Then, after a long restoration, the synagogue reopened in 2021, both as a place of prayer and as a cultural centre, its colours bright again. If the doors are open, step in and look up into the octagon, an unusual shape for a synagogue, which gathers the whole congregation under a single dome. Now walk round the corner into Dob utca and head east for a few steps. Look for a golden figure against a wall, reaching down towards someone on the ground.