Smichov Synagogue

Not in the Old Jewish Quarter but right in the middle of a shopping district near our hotel. This district was an industrial and rather seedy working class neighborhood in the last half of the 19th century into the 20th. And it had a Jewish population. The synagogue was Orthodox.. It dates to 1863. In 1897 a mob riot of Czech nationalists rampaged through the neighborhood and badly vandalized the synagogue. It was renovated In 1930 and was used by the Nazis as a storage facility for Jewish objects. Since the fall of communism it was renovated again and is now a antiquary book store and the location for Jewish archives. I recognized it was a synagogue because of the inscription from Zechariah in Hebrew letters around two walls.