Neue Synagoge

The Neue Synagoge on Oranienburger Strasse is the foremost example of Moorish-orientalist historicism in Germany, inaugurated in 1866 to designs by Eduard Knoblauch and crowned by a gilded central dome rising over 50 meters. On the night of 9 November 1938, Berlin police lieutenant Wilhelm Krützfeld personally intervened to stop SA men from torching the building — invoking a local heritage protection statute and driving the paramilitaries away, an act of individual defiance almost unparalleled in that night's events. Allied bombing in 1943 nonetheless destroyed the main nave; East Germany left the ruin standing for decades before reconstruction of the front section began in 1988. The restored building now houses the Centrum Judaicum, with a permanent exhibition on Berlin's Jewish community history. Visitors who climb to the dome gain a rarely-seen panorama across the rooftops of Mitte.

Completed in 1866, badly damaged on Kristallnacht and in WW2, gold dome reconstructed in the 1990s — now the Centrum Judaicum foundation.