Jewish heritage in the Balkans
Discover synagogues and Jewish religious heritage across the Balkans. Explore the places and local stories preserved in our landmark guides.
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Synagogues, stories and a heritage of refuge.
Jewish life in the Balkans reaches back to Roman times, but it was the Sephardic Jews, expelled from Spain in 1492 and welcomed in Ottoman cities, who gave the region much of its Jewish character, along with the Ladino language.
In Sarajevo, the Old Synagogue now houses the Museum of the Jews of Bosnia & Herzegovina, and the city keeps the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated medieval manuscript saved several times by people of different faiths. Dubrovnik’s synagogue, in a narrow street of the old town, is among the oldest in Europe still in use, and Maribor’s medieval synagogue in Slovenia is one of the oldest surviving on the continent.
Ashkenazi communities later built grand synagogues such as the Art Nouveau landmark in Subotica, while in Albania the tradition of besa, a sacred promise of protection, saved Jews during the Second World War. Although the Holocaust devastated these communities, their synagogues, cemeteries and museums keep the memory and the living culture of Balkan Jewry present today.
Sarajevo
The Old Synagogue museum, Ashkenazi Synagogue and the Sarajevo Haggadah.
Dubrovnik & Maribor
Two of Europe’s oldest synagogues on the Adriatic and in Slovenia.
Subotica
A restored Art Nouveau synagogue, one of the most beautiful in Europe.
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