The Synagogue in Subotica

The building is set on a spacious location on the corner of The Synagogue Square and Jakab and Komor square, and, in compliance with the predominant practices, it is separated and retracted from the street regulation lines. A call for proposals for the design of a new Synagogue in nearby Szeged (Hungary) was announced in 1889.  As Subotica already had its own plot for the construction of a new Synagogue in the very centre of the city, they observed the competition in Szeged carefully.

The first prize in Szeged was awarded to the great designer of many European Synagogue, Lipót Baumhorn, for a free-style design, while was awarded to Marcel Komor and Dezsõ Jakab. This team also participated in the call for proposals, submitting contemporarily formed Synagogue, envisaged in the modern style of Hungarian Art Nouveau.

The Municipality of Subotica immediately took over runner-up design, and, after some modifications, the construction of the New Synagogue in Subotica began in 1900, and finished as early as 1902. The Synagogue has a central base, with a large central dome rising above it, flanked by four lateral smaller domes on corners, covered with enamelled roof tiles in a combination of green ochre and blue.

The plentiful interior is decorated predominantly with gilt plaster ornaments in lavish colours, decorated with floral motives, while the windows are decorated with multicoloured stained glass made in the famous Miksa Róth workshop. 

What is obvious is craftsmanship and well-deliberated conception of each tiny detail (carpentry, ironwork, etc.), as a unique, all-embracing work of art.  

All of the above, both in terms of construction and decoration served the designers to physically present the building of the Subotica Synagogue through a strong symbolic message – as the embodiment of the tent where the Jewish people kept the Torah during the forty-year exodus in the wilderness after receiving the Commandments on Mt Sinai and making a covenant with God.