High Synagogue

Built in 1556-1563, this was among the richest synagogues in the Jewish town in Kazimierz. Its name is associated with the location of the men's prayer room on the first floor. Such a solution was most probably connected to adding another storey to an earlier, one-storey-high building that at the time must have been occupied by traders. This was the only synagogue in Poland to have the prayer room on an upper storey and was devastated during the second world war. After 1945, it was mainly used for storage. From 1966 to the 1990s, it housed the Heritage Preservation Studios (PKZ). In 2005, an exhibition on the history and culture of Jews was made available to visitors here, and in 2008, the Jewish Religious Congregation reclaimed the building and it plans to lease it to the Historical Museum of Kraków.

The former façade of the synagogue is preserved, reinforced with four buttresses and equipped with three long semi-circularly closed windows. Entering, we pass through a modest Renaissance portal with an iron-clad door. Fragments of wall paintings with inscriptions from the time of the 1860s reconstruction were discovered on the walls of the prayer room during the conservation works. The stone Aaron Hakodesh (Holy Ark enclosing the Torah Scrolls) - the oldest and largest in Poland - stands between two columns and is crowned by a grotesque ornamentation with images of two griffins.