Jewish Quarter

“The names of 77,297 Bohemian and Moravian Jews who were killed in the Holocaust are written by hand on the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue. The Old-New Synagogue next to it has been in use since the 1270s. The cemetery holds 100,000 burials in twelve vertical layers.”

About Jewish Quarter

Prague's Jewish community dates to the 10th century. The quarter was named Josefov after Joseph II's 1781 emancipation reforms. The ghetto housing was demolished in the late 19th century for sanitation; the major synagogues and cemetery were preserved. The Pinkas Synagogue became a Holocaust memorial after 1948.

Overview Josefov — Prague's Jewish Quarter — occupies six blocks of the Old Town and contains six synagogues, the Old Jewish Cemetery, and the Jewish Town Hall from the medieval and early modern period of Prague's Jewish community. The quarter was extensively rebuilt in the late nineteenth century when city planners demolished most of the original ghetto housing for sanitary reasons, leaving the major religious and memorial sites intact within a fabric of Art Nouveau apartment buildings that now constitutes Prague's most concentrated area of that style.

The Story Behind It Jews have lived in Prague since the tenth century, making it one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe. The ghetto was walled and locked at night from the medieval period; the name Josefov comes from Emperor Joseph II, who relaxed restrictions on Jewish residents in 1781 as part of his Enlightenment reform program. The Old Jewish Cemetery — in use from the early fifteenth century until 1787, when a new cemetery was opened outside the city walls — contains 12,000 visible gravestones above an estimated 100,000 burials in up to twelve layers, as the cemetery had no room to expand horizontally. The Czech-born writer Franz Kafka grew up adjacent to the quarter; his family's apartment is marked on Náměstí Franze Kafky immediately outside the old ghetto boundary.

What You'll Experience The six synagogues — Pinkas, Old-New, Maisel, Spanish, Klausen, and High — are accessible on a single combined ticket. The Pinkas Synagogue interior walls bear the names of 77,297 Bohemian and Moravian Jewish Holocaust victims inscribed by hand. The Old-New Synagogue, from the 1270s, is the oldest functioning synagogue in Europe. The Old Jewish Cemetery requires a separate approach — the density of layered gravestones, tilted and pushed together over centuries, is unlike any other cemetery.

Getting There Josefov is in Prague's Old Town, adjacent to Old Town Square. Metro Line A to Staroměstská station. The combined ticket for all six synagogues is available at any of the entrances.

The Experience

Six synagogues on a combined ticket — from the 1270s Old-New Synagogue to the Pinkas Holocaust memorial — and the Old Jewish Cemetery with its compressed layers of gravestones above 100,000 burials.

Why It Matters

Josefov preserves the most complete surviving ensemble of Jewish heritage in Central Europe and contains the Holocaust memorial with the most individual names recorded in a single space anywhere in the world.

Why Visit

The Pinkas Synagogue walls covered in individual names produce an effect that numerical abstraction of Holocaust victims cannot — the specificity of 77,297 names in a single room is the most direct encounter with scale the quarter offers.