Germany Guide
Central Bavaria
The synagogue
Address: Halderstrasse 6–8
Opening time: Tues, Thurs & Fri 9am–4pm, Wed 9am–8pm, Sun 10am–5pm
Price: €4
Augsburg's synagogue houses the Jüdisches Kulturmuseum Augsburg Schwaben, an engrossing exhibition on the history of Jewish settlement not just in Augsburg itself, but also in the surrounding districts where – thanks to the region's complex political position as an outlier of the Habsburg lands – Jewish communities grew up in quite small rural districts. In the margravate of Burgau as many as a third of the inhabitants of some villages were Jewish. The Augsburg community was extinguished by the Nazis, and the postwar community was dwindling in size as recently as the 1980s, but subsequent immigration from the former Soviet Union has boosted its numbers to 1600 – larger than it was before the Holocaust. The exhibition ends with a glimpse into the synagogue itself, a darkly beautiful blend of Jugendstil and Byzantine influences with a shallow dome picked out in gold.