Tempio Maggiore: The Great Synagogue
Why is it significant?
Behind a garden and a railing rises a building of striped stone with horseshoe arches and a great green copper dome. It looks as if it had flown in from Andalusia or Istanbul, and it is one of the landmarks of the Florentine skyline. This is the Tempio Maggiore, the Great Synagogue of Florence.
Key Facts
| Place | Tempio Maggiore: The Great Synagogue |
|---|---|
| Address | Via Luigi Carlo Farini 6, 50121 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.77270, 11.26640 |
| Part of Walk | Florence, Capital of Italy: Boulevards, Exiles and the English Cemetery |
| Generated | Generated |
Behind a garden and a railing rises a building of striped stone with horseshoe arches and a great green copper dome. It looks as if it had flown in from Andalusia or Istanbul, and it is one of the landmarks of the Florentine skyline. This is the Tempio Maggiore, the Great Synagogue of Florence.
To understand why it is here, you have to go back to 1571, when Grand Duke Cosimo de' Medici forced the Jews of Tuscany into a ghetto, a cramped, walled quarter right beside the old market in the centre of the city, locked at night. It lasted for almost three centuries. The gates came down in the 1840s, and with Italian unification Jews finally became full citizens. Then, in the 1880s and 1890s, the old ghetto itself was demolished with the market, and on its ground rose Piazza della Repubblica.
A free community wanted a temple worthy of the city. David Levi, the president of the community, left his fortune for it, and between 1874 and 1882 three architects, Marco Treves, Mariano Falcini and Vincenzo Micheli, built this synagogue. They chose the Moorish style on purpose: it was not a church, it was not a palace, it was something proudly different. Inside, every surface is painted with geometric patterns in warm colours.
The twentieth century tested it. During the German occupation, Florentine Jews were rounded up and deported, and more than two hundred never returned. In August 1944 retreating German troops laid explosives in the building; some went off, but the structure survived. And in November 1966 the flood waters filled the prayer hall and damaged sacred scrolls and books, which were patiently restored.
Today it is again a living synagogue, with a small museum of the community's history. From here, walk west along Via dei Pilastri and Via della Pergola to the theatre where the capital went in the evenings.