Tempio Maggiore di Roma (Great Synagogue)

The Fondazione Museo Ebraico's account is that after 1870 the Jewish communities of Europe were able to build monumental synagogues for the first time in centuries, and that Rome's was deliberately placed in the quarter the city's Jews had been shut into. In 1888 the Università ebraica contracted with the Comune for a site and the agreement was rescinded in 1896. A competition was held in 1889 calling for a building of carattere monumentale e severo, and Osvaldo Armanni and Vincenzo Costa won it. The synagogue went up on one of the four lots created when the decayed parts of the ghetto were demolished. The interior is richly decorated in art nouveau, and the bimah does not stand exactly in the Roman-rite position. The Tempio Spagnolo was placed in the building in 1932 and furnished in 1948 with the marble fittings of the Cinque Scole.