Judenplatz

Judenplatz in Vienna's Innere Stadt was the medieval heart of the city's Jewish community, ringed by a synagogue, school and hospital. The Vienna Gesera of 1420/21 saw the community expelled or murdered and the synagogue torn down; its foundations still lie beneath the square. Since October 2000 the square has been dominated by Rachel Whiteread's Holocaust memorial for the 65,000 murdered Austrian Jews, a concrete cast of an inside-out library whose book spines face inward. The neighbouring Misrachi-Haus houses the Museum Judenplatz with the archaeological remains of the medieval synagogue. The square feels quietly intimate today, with a Lessing statue facing the memorial across the cobbles.