Spanish Synagogue (Venice)

Spanish Synagogue

Religion
Affiliation	Orthodox Judaism
Status	Active
Location
Location	Venice, Italy
Architecture
Architect(s)	Baldassare Longhena
Style	Baroque
Completed	1581

The Spanish Synagogue (Italian: Scola Ponentina, or Sinagoga Scuola Spagnola) is one of the two functioning synagogues in the Venetian Ghetto of Venice, northern Italy. It is open for services from Passover until the end of the High Holiday season.

The Spanish Synagogue was founded by Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula in the 1490s who reached Venice, usually via Amsterdam, Livorno or Ferrara, in the 1550s. The four-story yellow stone building was constructed in 1580 and was restored in 1635. It is a clandestine synagogue, which was tolerated on the condition that it be concealed within a building that gives no appearance being a house of worship form the exterior, although the interior is elaborately decorated.^[1]

View towards the ark
Gate on campo delle scole
Holocaust memorial

The synagogue's ornate interior contains three large chandeliers and a dozen smaller ones, as well as a huge sculpted wooden ceiling.

References

^ Kaplan, Benjamin J., Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007, Chapter 8, pp. 194. ff.