Semper Synagogue, also known as the Dresden Synagogue, was built in 1838-40 for the Jewish community of Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

 by Gottfried Semper

Gottfried Semper

Gottfried Semper was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture, who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in Dresden and was put on the government's wanted list. Semper fled first to Zürich and later...

. It was an early example of the Moorish Revival

Moorish Revival

Moorish Revival or Neo-Moorish is one of the exotic revival architectural styles that were adopted by architects of Europe and the Americas in the wake of the Romanticist fascination with all things oriental...

 style of synagogue architecture. The Semper was the first synagogue to feature the richly ornamented interior that was to become the hallmark of Moorish Revival architecture. While the exterior was Romanesque, the elaborate Arabic-style interior featured a two-tiered balcony supported by columns copied from the Alhambra

Alhambra

The Alhambra , the complete form of which was Calat Alhambra , is a palace and fortress complex located in the Granada, Andalusia, Spain...

. The arches and balcony fronts were richly worked with intricate polychrome foliate and lattice designs in the Moorish style.

The synagogue was destroyed on Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...

.

The New Synagogue (Dresden)

New Synagogue (Dresden)

The New Synagogue in Dresden was completed in 2001 and designed by architects Rena Wandel-Hoefer and Wolfgang Lorch. It was built on the same location as the Semper Synagogue designed by Gottfried Semper, which was destroyed in 1938, during the Kristallnacht.The boundary wall of the New Synagogue...

was erected on the site of the Semper synagogue.

Images

• http://www.cafe-schoschana.com/seite-eng-sempersyn.htm