H appy birthday Great Symagogue of Rome!
The Jewish Community of Rome celebrate 100 years since the Temple has been built: a short history of the Synagogue
The Great Synagogue of Rome was designed by Vincenzo Costa and Osvaldo Armanni. The Temple was built between 1901 and 1904 on a site of 3,373 square metres. Yeas ago this was the site of the Ghetto, created in 1555 by the Pope Paul IV Carafa, where all the Jews were constricted to live. When the ghetto was opened, in 1870, many buildings were not good to live and they were destroyed. The Great Synagogue took the place of some of these buildings. The Jewish Community bought the plot from the City Council after thirteen years of negotiations. All the members of the Community gave some money to build it, even if the Community was not rich at all. Many people assisted to the inauguration, in 1904, the King also came. The President of the Rome Community, Angelo Sereni, described how thirty years after their emancipation, the Jews wanted a Synagogue “sited between the Capitol and the Janiculum, between the monuments to Vittorio Emanuele II and Garibaldi, the two great architects of our united Italy; a majestically free Temple, surrounded by the pure and free light of the sun”. The structure of the Synagogue is severe and simple, not without a certain moderate ornate richness, in perfect harmony with the forms of the other monuments in the city..
Silvia H. Antonucci