Grand Synagogue of Paris

The Grand Synagogue of Paris, also known as the Synagogue de la Victoire, features an imposing thirty-six-meter-high Romanesque-Byzantine facade that blends into the dense urban streetscape of the ninth arrondissement. Inaugurated in eighteen seventy-four, the building was designed by architect Alfred-Philibert Aldrophe to provide a representative house of worship for the city’s rapidly expanding Jewish population. Gustave de Rothschild financed the construction, which occupies a plot between residential buildings after plans to face the entrance toward a more prominent street were blocked by Empress Eugénie.