Josefov
The old Jewish ghetto district of Josefov remains one of the most remarkable sights in Prague and an essential slice of the city’s cultural heritage. Although the warren-like street plan of the old ghetto was demolished in the 1890s – to make way for avenues of luxurious five-storey mansions – six synagogues, the Jewish Town Hall and the medieval cemetery still survive. They were preserved under the Nazis as a record of communities they had destroyed. To this end, Jewish artefacts from Czechoslovakia and beyond were gathered here, and today make up one of the most comprehensive collections of Judaica in Europe.
Památník jaroslava ježka
Kaprova 10 
nm.cz. Tues 1–6pm. 20Kč.
If you happen to be in the Josefov area on a Tuesday afternoon, it’s worth taking the opportunity to visit the Památník Jaroslava Ježka, which occupies one room of the first-floor flat of the avant-garde composer Jaroslav Ježek (1906–42), at Kaprova 10. It’s a great way to escape the crowds, hear some of Ježek’s music, and admire the Modrý pokoj (Blue Room), with its functionalist furniture and grand piano, in which he did his composing.
Visiting Josefov’s sights
All the major sights of Josefov – the Old-New Synagogue, Old Jewish Cemetery, the Ceremonial Hall, the Maisel, Pinkas, Klausen and Spanish synagogues – are part of the Jewish Museum (jewishmuseum.cz) and covered by an all-in-one ticket, available from any of the quarter’s numerous ticket offices (main office at U staré školy 1). This costs 500Kč including the Old-New Synagogue, or 330Kč without. Opening hours vary but are basically daily (except Sat and Jewish holidays April–Oct 9am–6pm and Nov–March 9am–4.30pm).
Náměstí Jana Palacha
On the Josefov riverfront is Náměstí Jana Palacha, previously known as Red Army Square and embellished with a flowerbed in the shape of a red star (now replaced by an anonymous circular vent), in memory of the Soviet dead who were temporarily buried here in May 1945. The building on the east side of the square is the Faculty of Philosophy, where Jan Palach was a student (his bust adorns a corner of the building).
Old-New Synagogue (Staronová synagoga)
Červená 2. Mon–Fri & Sun: April–Oct 9am–6pm; Nov–March 9am–4.30pm. 200Kč.
The Old-New Synagogue (Staronová synagoga or Altneuschul) got its strange name from the fact that when it was built it was indeed very new, though eventually it became the oldest synagogue in Josefov. Begun in the second half of the thirteenth century, and featuring a wonderful set of steep, sawtooth brick gables, it is, in fact, the oldest functioning synagogue in Europe, one of the earliest Gothic buildings in Prague and still the religious centre for Prague’s Orthodox Jews. To get to the main hall, you must pass through one of the two low vestibules from which women watch the proceedings through narrow slits. Above the entrance is an elaborate tympanum covered in the twisting branches of a vine tree, its twelve bunches of grapes representing the tribes of Israel. The simple, plain interior is mostly taken up with the elaborate wrought-iron cage enclosing the bimah in the centre. The tattered red standard on display was originally a gift to the community from Emperor Ferdinand II for helping fend off the Swedes in 1648.
Old-New Synagogue
Jewish Town Hall (Židovská radnice)
Maiselova 18. Not open to the public.
The Jewish Town Hall is one of the few such buildings in central Europe to survive the Holocaust. Founded and funded by Mordecai Maisel, minister of finance to Rudolf II, in the sixteenth century, it was later rebuilt as the creamy-pink Baroque house you now see. The belfry has a clock on each of its four sides, plus a Hebrew one, stuck on the north gable, which, like the Hebrew script, goes “backwards”.
Jewish Town Hall
Maisel Synagogue (Maiselova synagoga)
Maiselova 10.
Like the town hall, the neo-Gothic Maisel Synagogue was founded and paid for entirely by Mordecai Maisel. Set back from the neighbouring houses south down Maiselova, the synagogue was, in its day, one of the most ornate in Josefov. Nowadays, its bare, whitewashed interior houses an exhibition on the history of the Czech–Jewish community up until the 1781 Edict of Tolerance. Along with glass cabinets filled with gold and silverwork, Hanukkah candlesticks, Torah scrolls and other religious artefacts, there’s also an example of the antiquated ruffs that had to be worn by all unmarried males from the age of twelve, and a copy of Ferdinand I’s decree enforcing the wearing of a circular yellow badge.
Klub za starou Prahu
Around 600 houses were demolished in the great Josefov asanace, the biggest incursion into the medieval fabric of the Czech capital ever to be permitted by the city authorities. The same fate awaited the Old Town and Malá Strana, the overzealous planners looking to transform medieval Prague into a kind of fin de siècle Paris on the Vltava. However, even in the late nineteenth century many Prague dwellers could see the value of their city’s heritage and launched a campaign to stop the destruction. This led to the creation of one of Prague’s most important civic movements – the Klub za starou Prahu (Old Prague Club, zastarouprahu.cz), which to this day continues to highlight the excesses of unscrupulous developers and call out corrupt city councillors whose actions threaten the integrity of this most precious city.
Pinkas Synagogue (Pinkasov synagoga)
Široká 3.
Built in the 1530s for the powerful Horovitz family, the Pinkas Synagogue has undergone countless restorations over the centuries. In 1958, the synagogue was transformed into a chilling memorial to the 77,297 Czech Jews killed during the Holocaust. The memorial was closed shortly after the 1967 Six Day War – due to damp, according to the Communists – and remained so, allegedly due to problems with the masonry, until it was finally, painstakingly restored in the 1990s. All that remains of the synagogue’s original decor today is the ornate bimah surrounded by a beautiful wrought-iron grille, supported by barley-sugar columns.
Of all the sights of the Jewish quarter, the Holocaust memorial is perhaps the most moving, with every bit of wall space taken up with the carved stone list of victims, stating simply their name, date of birth and date of death or transportation to the camps. It is the longest epitaph in the world, yet it represents a mere fraction of those who died in the Nazi concentration camps. Upstairs in a room beside the women’s gallery, there’s also a harrowing exhibition of drawings by children from the Jewish ghetto in Terezín, most of whom were killed in the camps.
Old Jewish Cemetery (Starý židovský hřbitov)
Široká 3.
At the heart of Josefov is the Old Jewish Cemetery, which you enter from the Pinkas Synagogue and leave by the Klausen Synagogue. Established in the fifteenth century, it was in use until 1787, by which time there were an estimated 100,000 people buried here, one on top of the other, six palms apart, and as many as twelve layers deep. The enormous number of visitors has meant that the graves themselves have been roped off to protect them, but if you get there before the crowds – a difficult task for much of the year – the cemetery can be a poignant reminder of the ghetto, its inhabitants subjected to inhuman overcrowding even in death. The rest of Prague recedes beyond the tall ash trees and cramped perimeter walls, the haphazard headstones and Hebrew inscriptions casting a powerful spell. On many graves you’ll see pebbles, some holding down kvitlech or small messages of supplication.
Old Jewish Cemetery
Ceremonial Hall (Obřadní sín)
U starého hřbitova.
Immediately on your left as you leave the cemetery is the Ceremonial Hall, a lugubrious neo-Renaissance house built in 1906 as a ceremonial hall by the Jewish Burial Society. Appropriately enough, it’s now devoted to an exhibition on Jewish traditions of burial and death, though it would probably be more useful if you could visit it before heading into the cemetery, rather than after.
Klausen Synagogue (Klausova synagoga)
U starého hřbitova 1.
A late seventeenth-century building, the Klausen Synagogue was founded in the 1690s by Mordecai Maisel on the site of several small buildings (Klausen), in what was then a notorious red-light district of Josefov. The ornate Baroque interior contains a rich display of religious objects from embroidered kippah to Kiddush cups, and explains the very basics of Jewish religious practice, and the chief festivals or High Holidays.
Pařížská
Running through the heart of the old ghetto is Pařížská, the ultimate bourgeois avenue, lined with buildings covered in a riot of late nineteenth-century sculpturing, spikes and turrets. At odds with the rest of Josefov, its ground-floor premises are home to designer label clothes and accessory shops, jewellery stores and swanky cafés, restaurants and bars.
Pařížská
Rudolfinum
Alšovo nábřeží 12. Tues–Sun 10am–6pm.
The Rudolfinum, or House of Artists (Dům umělců), is one of the proud civic buildings of the nineteenth-century Czech national revival. Built to house an art gallery, museum and concert hall for the Czech-speaking community, it became the seat of the new Czechoslovak parliament from 1919 until 1941 when it was closed down by the Nazis. Since 1946, the building has returned to its original artistic purpose and it’s now one of the capital’s main concert venues (home to the Czech Philharmonic) and exhibition spaces.
UPM (Museum of Decorative Arts)
17 listopadu 2 upm.cz. Closed for refurbishment at the time of writing.
From its foundation in 1885 through to the end of the First Republic, the Uměleckoprůmyslové muzeum or UPM received the best that the Czech modern movement had to offer – from Art Nouveau to the avant-garde – and its collection is consequently unrivalled. The building itself is richly decorated in mosaics, stained glass and sculptures, and its ground-floor temporary exhibitions are consistently excellent.
In recent years the UPM has undergone a complete rebuild, which has meant the exhibitions have been closed while work is completed. The aim was to more clearly define the curation of its collections after its 2018 re-opening. These collections include textiles and richly embroidered religious vestments from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, lacework from down the ages, costumes spanning three centuries, and impressive glass, ceramic and pottery displays – for many the highlight of the entire UPM. They also cover furniture, jewellery, curios, Czech photography, interwar prints, works by Josef Sudek, avant-garde graphics by Karel Teige, book designs by Josef Váchal and some of Alfons Mucha’s famous turn-of-the-twentieth-century Parisian advertising posters.
The Golem
Legends concerning the animation of unformed matter (which is what the Hebrew word golem means), using the mystical texts of the Kabbala, were around long before Frankenstein started playing around with corpses. The most famous golem was the giant servant made from the mud of the Vltava by Rabbi Löw, the sixteenth-century chief rabbi of Prague. It was brought to life when the rabbi placed a shem, a tablet with a magic Hebrew inscription, in its mouth.
There are numerous versions of the tale, though none earlier than the nineteenth century. In some, the golem is a figure of fun, flooding the rabbi’s kitchen rather in the manner of Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice; others portray him as the guardian of the ghetto, helping Rabbi Löw in his struggle with the anti-Semites at the court of Rudolf II. In almost all versions, however, the golem finally runs amok and Löw has to remove the shem once and for all, and hide the creature away in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue, where it has supposedly resided ever since – ready to come out again if needed.
Spanish Synagogue (Španělská synagoga)
Vězeňská 1.
Built in 1868, the Spanish Synagogue is by far the most ornate synagogue in Josefov, its stunning, gilded Moorish interior deliberately imitating the Alhambra (hence its name). Every available surface is drowning in a profusion of floral motifs and geometric patterns, in vibrant reds, greens and blues, which are repeated in the synagogue’s huge stained-glass windows. The synagogue now houses an interesting exhibition on the history of Prague’s Jews from the time of the 1781 Edict of Tolerance to the Holocaust. Lovely, slender, painted cast-iron columns hold up the women’s gallery, where the displays include a fascinating set of photos depicting the old ghetto at the time of its demolition. There’s a section on Prague’s German–Jewish writers, including Kafka, and information on the Holocaust. In the upper-floor prayer hall there’s an exhibition of silver religious artefacts – a mere fraction of the six thousand pieces collected here, initially for Prague’s Jewish Museum (founded in 1906), with more gathered later under the Nazis.
Spanish Synagogue
222 317 007, 