The Jewish Quarter and Dohány Street Synagogue

Immediately east of the inner ring road (Károly körút) in Inner Erzsébetváros (District VII) lies Budapest's historic Jewish Quarter. By the late 19th century, nearly a quarter of Budapest's population was Jewish, so integral to the city's cultural and commercial life that the neighbourhood runs seamlessly into the central avenues rather than sitting behind medieval walls. In the winter of 1944 and 1945, however, the Nazi occupiers and Hungarian Arrow Cross regime fenced these blocks into a walled ghetto holding 70,000 people until liberation in January 1945. Today the quarter combines active synagogues, memorials and kosher bakeries with the city's liveliest courtyard bars and restaurants.

The Triangle of Synagogues

Within five minutes' walk of each other stand three distinct synagogues reflecting the three historic currents of Hungarian Judaism:

• Dohány Street Synagogue (Dohány utca 2): built between 1854 and 1859 by Viennese architect Ludwig Förster in richly patterned Moorish-revival style, this is the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world, seating nearly 3,000 worshippers. It serves the Neolog (reform-minded, integrated) community and includes a pipe organ once played by Franz Liszt. Your ticket covers a guided tour of the sanctuary, the Hungarian Jewish Museum (built on the site of Theodor Herzl's birthplace), the cemetery in the garden (unusually located beside a synagogue because victims of the 1944 and 1945 winter ghetto siege had to be buried here) and the weeping-willow Raoul Wallenberg Holocaust Memorial Park, whose silver metal leaves bear the names of murdered family members.
• Rumbach Street Synagogue (Rumbach Sebestyén utca 11 to 13): designed in 1872 by young Viennese Secession pioneer Otto Wagner for the Status Quo Ante congregation. After decades of ruin, its octagonal interior, soaring on slim cast-iron columns painted in blue, red and gold Alhambra-inspired arabesques, has been completely restored and reopened with a cultural exhibition upstairs.
• Kazinczy Street Orthodox Synagogue (Kazinczy utca 29 to 31): built in 1913 by the Löffler brothers in late Hungarian Art Nouveau style, tucked inside a courtyard alongside a kosher restaurant and community school.

Practical rules and walking the quarter

All three synagogues and the Jewish Museum are closed on Saturdays (Shabbat) and on Jewish holidays, while remaining open on Sundays and weekdays (closing earlier on Friday afternoons in winter; check the official site). Dress modestly with covered shoulders and knees; men are provided with a paper head covering at the ticket barrier, and airport-style bag screening is in place.

Between the synagogues, walk through the seven linked courtyards of Gozsdu Udvar (between Király utca and Dob utca), spot the surviving fragment of the 1944 ghetto wall preserved inside the courtyard at Király utca 15, and stop at Fröhlich Kóser Cukrászda on Dob utca 22 for a slice of flódni, the rich four-layered Jewish-Hungarian pastry filled with poppy seed, walnut, apple and plum jam.