7. Prague: 3-Hour Jewish District Insider's Tour
Join a small group or have a private tour led by an expert guide to explore Prague's Jewish district, one of the oldest communities in Europe. Visit the Jewish Museum, the district's different synagogues, and the Old Jewish Cemetary.
Your tour begins with a visit to the Jewish Museum and continues throughout the district where you will stop at six important points of interest.
Visit the Old-New Synagogue, Europe's oldest working synagogue, and admire the pulpit's wrought-iron grill. See the scriptures on the walls and the Holy Ark that holds the Torah scrolls. Learn how the Golem stripped off its talisman still lives in the attic.
Afterward, see the Pinkas Synagogue and its memorial dedicated to the Holocaust. Be moved by the lists of names, birth dates, and dates of disappearance inscribed on the walls of the 77,297 Czech victims of the Nazis. There is also a collection of paintings and drawings by children held in the Terezín concentration camp during WWII.
Follow your guide to Klausen Synagogue, the largest in the former ghetto, and see exhibits on Jewish ceremonies of birth and death, worship, and special holy days.
Continue on to visit Europe's oldest surviving Jewish cemetery. Feel its sobering atmosphere despite its lack of use in more than two centuries.
Walk around to see some of the 12,000 crumbling stones, heaped together, covering perhaps 100,000 graves, piled in layers because of the lack of space.
Finish your tour at the Maisel Synagogue and learn about the history of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia from the 10th to the 18th centuries, with displays of ceremonial silver, textiles, prints, and books.