Synagogue

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The Great Synagogue in Dohány Street, also known as the Dohány Synagogue, or the Tabac‐Schul, the Yiddish translation of dohány (tobacco), after the Hungarian name of the street, is located in Belváros, the inner city of Pest, in the eastern section of Budapest. It was built between 1854‐1859 by the Neolog Jewish community of Pest according to the plans of the Viennese architect Frigyes Feszl and Ludwig Förster. The synagogue neighbors a major Budapest thoroughfare expressing the optimism and the newly elevated status of the Hungarian Jews in the mid years of the 19th century.

It is a monumental, magnificent synagogue, with a capacity of 2,964 seats (1,492 for men and 1,472 in the women’s galleries) making it one of the largest in the world. The building has a lenghth of more than 53 meters while its width has 26.5 meters. The design of the Dohány Street synagogue, while basically in a Moorish style, also features a mixture of Byzantine, Romantic, and Gothic elements.