Old Synagogue (Stara Synagoga)

The Old Synagogue (Stara Synagoga) is the oldest surviving synagogue building in Poland, standing at 24 Szeroka Street in the Kazimierz district and now open as a branch of the Museum of Kraków devoted to the history and culture of the city's Jews. People come to see a place of worship that dates to the early 15th century (around 1407), to read the exhibitions on Jewish Kraków, and to understand how this corner of the city looked before the occupation.

The building looks less like a house of prayer and more like a defensive structure, and that is deliberate. Thick, fortress-like walls, high windows set well above street level and heavy buttressing reflect the architecture of an era when a synagogue also had to protect the community inside it. After a fire in the 16th century, the Italian architect Matteo Gucci rebuilt it in a Gothic-Renaissance form, and that shape is what you walk up to today at the head of Szeroka Street.

Inside, the Old Synagogue operates as a branch of the Museum of Kraków focused on the history and culture of Kraków's Jews. The exhibitions cover Jewish religious life and the everyday world of the community that lived in and around Kazimierz for centuries. Because the interior is itself the oldest surviving synagogue in the country, the walls and prayer hall are as much a part of the visit as the objects on display.

The synagogue was devastated by the Nazis during the occupation of Kraków, when the building was stripped and desecrated. It was later restored and given its present role as a museum, so what visitors see is a recovered monument rather than an untouched one. That history of loss and restoration is part of why the site matters, standing at the centre of a district whose Jewish population was destroyed during the Second World War.

The Old Synagogue sits at the top of Szeroka Street, the wide square-like street that forms the core of old Jewish Kazimierz, so it pairs naturally with the other synagogues and squares nearby on a walk through the district. It works well as a first stop to get the long history before exploring the cafes and streets around it. See our Kraków guide for how Kazimierz connects to the Old Town and the rest of the city.