Great City Synagogue (Lviv)

The synagogue

The Great City Synagogue ( Ukrainian Велика міська синагога , Polish Wielka Synagoga Miejska) was a synagogue in Lviv , Ukraine . It was located in the old Jewish quarter not far from today's city center.

history

Former synagogues

Sketch of the interior

The first Lviv synagogue was located at number 29 on Iwan-Fedorow-Straße, slightly offset from its current location. During an excavation in 1904, the Jewish historian Majer Balaban found a beam of the wooden structure with the date 1320. First written mentions can be found in the letters of Kasimir III. from 1367. In documents from 1407 there are references to renovation work and wood deliveries, which indicates the existence of heated rooms, such as a Beth Midrash . In the city fire of 1527, the wooden building burned down completely; it was rebuilt from stone in the Gothic style , offset by a few meters . The first sources for the second building can be found in documents from 1555. There is little evidence of its design. Until 1606 it served as the Great City Synagogue ; but since it was quite small, the Golden Rose Synagogue was used as such afterwards . In various records from the 18th century, the poor condition of the building is handed down, which was probably the reason for the demolition in 1797.

New building

Therefore, between 1799 and 1801, the new building was built in the classicism style. The removal of the city wall , which would otherwise have stood in the way of the building , also took place at the same time . After the sanctuaries were moved from the Goldene Rosen Synagogue to the new building, it became the main synagogue in the city. In 1878 the roof was renewed and in 1910 the stairwell was renovated under the supervision of the architects Alfred Władysław Zachariewicz and Józef Sosnowski. During the German occupation of Ukraine from August 14, 1941, the city's synagogues were destroyed. In 1943 the building was blown up by the Nazis .

Preservation

The first excavations took place in 1970, during which some cellars and foundations were exposed and the ruins were secured. The ruins were left to decay until 2010. Since then, The Space of Synagogues has been working on converting the remains of the synagogue, a library and the Goldene Rosen Synagogue into a memorial. The project by the German architect Franz Reschke was awarded the contract. The construction work is taking place under the supervision of the Ukrainian architect Jurij Stolarow and should be completed by the opening on September 4, 2016.