Jewish Town Hall, Renaissance town hall in Josefov, Prague, Czech Republic
The Jewish Town Hall is a Renaissance building with a late Baroque facade, standing on Maiselova Street in the Josefov quarter of Prague. It is one of the few historic buildings in the area that has remained in active communal use to this day.
A Jewish town hall in Prague was first mentioned in 1541 and rebuilt after a fire in 1577 under community head Mordechai Maisel, with the adjacent High Synagogue by builder Pankratius Roder. After fires in 1689 and 1754, the present building was constructed in 1763–1765 by Josef Schwanitzer, whose tower holds a memorial note recording a loan of 200,000 gulden for rebuilding the burned Jewish Town.
The building still serves as the administrative seat of Prague's Jewish community, making it one of the few active centers of Jewish communal life in Central Europe. Visitors who walk past it see a working institution rather than an empty historical shell.
The building stands at Maiselova 18, opposite the Old New Synagogue, and is closed to the public, so plan to view it from the street. A kosher restaurant occupies the ground-floor hall, giving a reason to step inside. The tower clock and the Hebrew clock on the gable facing the synagogue are both visible from outside.
Both clocks are driven by a single mechanism built in 1764 by Sebastian Laudensberger, clockmaker to the Prague royal court. The tower clock has Roman dials and a bell; the Hebrew dial faces the Old New Synagogue, its hands moving right to left. Guillaume Apollinaire's verses made the reversed clock a symbol of Jewish Prague.
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