Sarajevo Synagogue

Sarajevo Synagogue is Sarajevo's primary and largest synagogue and is located on the south bank of the river Miljacka. It was constructed in 1902 and remains the only functioning synagogue in Sarajevo today. A Sephardi synagogue (also known as Velika Avlija) is known to have been built in 1581 with the donation of Turkish Beylerbey Sijamush Pasha to help members of the Jewish community in Sarajevo who were poor. By the end of the 16th century, the space encompassing Velika Avlija was turned into the first synagogue. The building burned down in both 1679 and 1778 and was rebuilt each time. It now serves as a Jewish museum. The Holocaust in the 1940s and the civil war during the 1990s left fewer than 5,700 Jews in former Yugoslavia. The Jewish community, like the entire country, was once defined by its unique combination of eastern and western traditions. Populations of Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews peacefully co-existed with their Christian and Muslim neighbors in Sarajevo and elsewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The building was renovated in the 2000s.