Szegő Dóra - Szegő György: Synagogues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2004)
The Great Synagogue in Dohány utca
its reconstruction, Hungary’s and the world's Jewry have been able to use the synagogue in its original splendour. On major Jewish holidays, the synagogue is filled to capacity. Thanks to the organ, the temple has hosted superb concerts as events of the annual Budapest Jewish Festival. On such occasions, the square outside the synagogue has been used as the venue of literary events for the past ten years or so. In 2003 an ornamental pavement of mismatched symbolism incompatible with the spirit of the place was laid down, making the space ill-suited to the purposes of cultural programmes. At the time the Jewish Museum was constructed, another, smaller, synagogue in Modernist style was also built to honour the Jewish soldiers who had fallen in World War I. This is the Heroes’ Temple. (The part of the plot facing Wesselényi utca was donated to the community by the municipality of Budapest.) The temple, designed by Ferenc Faragó, is not connected to the building of the Jewish Museum, as a small courtyard was left between the two, separated from the street by crenellated arcades with an iron fence. The Wesselényi utca gate opens into the courtyard from where the dome-topped temple coated with white travertine limestone is accessible. With its stepped moulding and hemispherical dome, the new temple has an ancient Oriental flavour, and yet it has a distinctly Modernist quality at the same time. Each side of the temple is articulated by ■ Exterior of the Heroes temple in the Dohány utca iynagogue 32
