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Portuguese Synagogue (Esnoga), Amsterdam

Portuguese Synagogue (Esnoga), Amsterdam

Elias Bouwman

Photo: A.A.W.J. Rietman · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Location
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Client / Owner
Sephardic community of Amsterdam
Year
Completed 1675
Access
Tickets required
Typology
Spiritual
Style
Baroque

Amsterdam's Sephardic Jewish community, which had merged three congregations into the Talmud Torah, bought the site on December 12, 1670. Elias Bouwman designed the synagogue, and the article spells his name two ways. Work began on April 17, 1671, and it opened on August 2, 1675. An inscription gives 1672, the year the building was meant to be completed. The infobox calls the style Baroque and gives brick. It stands free on wooden piles, with a single high rectangular space and a sand floor.

Twelve stone columns support the women's gallery, each for one of the Twelve Tribes. It has 72 windows, and the ark of 1744 is solid Brazilian jacaranda. The main sanctuary has no electric system.

It is an active Orthodox synagogue of Sephardi rite, and visitors have come since the late 1600s.

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