What to see in the Jewish quarter in Prague, an itinerary that allows you to discover an unpublished part of Stare Mesto, relevant both for its extension and for the great cultural and artistic interest it has.
Tourist information
The history of Jewish settlements in Prague begins around the 10th century.
Over time, persecutions of all kinds, fires and looting made the life of the Jewish community very difficult.
Around the middle of the eighteenth century, an ordinance of Maria Theresa of Habsburg made official the expulsion of the Jews, while in the second half of the same century, the emperor Joseph II demolished the walls of the Ghetto and began the restructuring of the Jewish quarter, which was renamed Josefov in his honor.
It was not until 1848 that Jewish civil rights were recognized.
The years of the Nazi occupation of Prague, from 1939 to 1945 during the Second World War, were those that saw the Jewish community most affected by fierce persecutions and deportations.
Currently, all the buildings, both secular and religious, form the Jewish ghetto, together with the adjoining cemetery and constitute an immense open-air museum.
What see
The Jewish town hall is a Renaissance building dating back to the second half of the 16th century, noteworthy is the clock of the small tower with the numbers in Hebrew and the hands that rotate counterclockwise.
As for the old Jewish cemetery, the main feature, which makes it one of the major tourist attractions, consists in the large number of burials, which reaches the incredible figure of twenty thousand, with tombstones partially superimposed on each other due to the narrowness of the spaces in relation to the number of the deceased.
The Jewish epigraphs and the reliefs adorned with the tombstones are considered an extremely interesting testimony concerning the Jewish community of that time, documenting different aspects of the deceased's civil condition, including his belonging to arts and crafts, particular social classes, such as that of priests.
