Subotica Synagogue

About the Synagogue

Subotica is a multicultural city in northern Serbia, home to one of Europe's most stunning Art Nouveau synagogues. Built in 1902 by architects Marcell Komor and Dezső Jakab in the Hungarian Secession style, the synagogue features vibrant floral motifs, Zsolnay ceramic tiles, and a soaring dome that blends Eastern and Western decorative traditions. After decades of neglect and a meticulous restoration completed in 2018, it stands again as a jewel of early 20th-century architecture.

Completed in 1902 after roughly a year of construction, the building was designed by the Budapest architects Marcell Komor and Dezső Jakab for the city's Neolog Jewish congregation, and it stands as one of the few surviving synagogues in the Hungarian Secession, or Art Nouveau, style. The same architects later gave Subotica its town hall, finished in 1910, which tied their work to the city's appearance. The synagogue's Jewish community was nearly destroyed in the Holocaust, and the largely empty building was handed to the municipality in 1979 before decades of decay. A long restoration, completed in 2018 with Hungarian and Serbian state funding, returned it to use, and it appears on Serbia's UNESCO tentative list.