Prague Attractions

Venue: Jewish Museum    When: Daily; not Sat

Housing the largest collection of Bohemian and Moravian Jewish material in the world, Prague's Jewish Museum is housed in several buildings in the former ghetto of Josefov. It provides a fascinating insight into the city's rich (and often harrowing) history.

When Josefov was redeveloped early in the 1900s, several buildings - amongst them four synagogues - were preserved as the venues for a museum to commemorate the Jewish heritage of Prague and Czechoslovakia. The enterprise was threatened by the Nazi invasion during the Second World War, when the area was ghettoised but, ironically, the museum was saved by Nazi intervention, albeit in its most sinister form. The area was intended as the Museum of an Extinct Race, thereby ensuring the collection was in fact increased. With the Nazi defeat, the museum returned to Czech hands and today it is run in collaboration with the remaining Jewish community in Prague.

The museum covers much of the area known as Josefov. The tiny Old Jewish Cemetery contains the resting places of more than 12,000 bodies, including Prague notable Rabbi Loew, who was the alleged Frankenstein behind the legend of the Golem (a monster made out of mud). The Maisel Synagogue and Spanish Synagogue (named because of its Moorish architecture) chart the history of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia. The Klausen Synagogue and Ceremonial Hall contain exhibitions about Jewish customs and traditions. The Pinkas Synagogue is now a Holocaust memorial, containing an exhibition of children's drawings from Terezin concentration camp as well as a restored wall showing the names of the 77,297 Czech Jews who died during the Shoah.

The Jewish population of Prague is estimated to have dropped from 50,000 in 1939 to 1500 today. The museum provides an essential service in cataloguing history and culture as well as unifying remaining Jews. Since the fall of Communism, several synagogues in Josefov have reopened as places of worship, signalling a revival of sorts.