Sinagoga di Firenze e Museo ebraico

I love to visit synagogues in every country.
This one was spectacular. The tour guides are lovely and extremely knowledgeable. The tour itself brought me to tears. They had a great representation of the history of Italian Jews.
As John F said, no pics are allowed on the inside and the synagogue is very protected.

The Jews in most of Italy were not really liberated until the 1840’s or so. As a result there was no opportunity to build impressive synagogues until the mid nineteenth century. This one dates from about 1878 and has a dome to rival most of the renaissance churches in the city. The interior is in the popular Moorish Revival style used for synagogues and some private houses in the late Victorian period all over the world. (It reminded me a lot of Frederick Church’s home, Olana, in Hudson, New York!) It is richly coloured and very intricate. Guides are congregation members and extremely knowledgeable about local Jewish history, which dates back to the middle ages. Despite the destruction of most of the Jewish community in Italy during the holocaust, this synagogue still operates regularly.
There is also a nice collection of local Judaica, some very old, in the museum on the upper floors.
No pictures and you must go through a metal detector. They have had several terrorist threats to which, according to our guide, the Italian police have been purposely negligent.

Leider muss sich auch die Sinagoga in Florenz vor dem rechten Rattenpakt schützen. Nichtjuden können sie deshalb nur vom Borgo Pinti aus von außen über den Zaun bewundern.