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Staronová synagoga

Czechia

Before you step inside, look at the ground. The Old-New Synagogue was raised sometime in the second half of the thirteenth century on the original riverside level of Prague's Old Town, before the district was lifted by one to three metres against flooding, so the building sits lower than the streets now around it. It is among the oldest synagogues in Europe, and the world, still used for worship, one of the oldest surviving synagogue buildings anywhere, and the oldest surviving structure in Josefov. The open space around it once served as a market and a place to wash laundry, and it also acted as a firebreak: if the neighbouring houses burned, the flames could not easily leap across to the synagogue.

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