The Jewish quarter in Boskovice with its crooked lanes, town hall, hospital, rabbinate, shul, mikve and butchers' shops is among the most interesting Jewish-heritage sites in the country. Established as early as the 14th - 15th centuries in between the castle and the old town, it was an educational center where Jewish scholars prepared young apprentices to become rabbis. In the 19th century, the Jews constituted a third of the town's population. The ghetto's dominant feature is a 17th-century synagogue, rebuilt to its present shape in the first half of the 19th century. An outstretched Jewish cemetery with 2,500 grave-stones, some of them from the 17th century, lies in western suburbs of the town.

Břeclav: The first documented evidence about the presence of Jews in Břeclav dates back to the 1414. In the 16th century, it was a Jewish settlement with a synagogue and a cemetery. The settlement was completely destroyed during the 30-year's war and the Jews expelled from the neighboring village of Valtice settled here again in 1651. The new Roman synagogue of the 19th century constructed by Max Fleischer outlived the bombardment and destructions of World War II to become a storage house. It was renovated in 1997-1999 to become an exhibition of Jewish settlement in the region. There is also a major Jewish cemetery nearby with over 400 gravestones, a neo-Renaissance Kuffner family crypt and a neo-Gothic ceremonial chamber.

The Jewish quarter in Mikulov prides itself on its illustrious scholarly traditions and synagogues dating back to the 15th century. The Zámostí district of Třebíč, with its 120 buildings ranging in style from Renaissance to baroque to classical, is the best-preserved Jewish quarter in the entire country.

Do not hesitate to visit one of these interesting sites. You will learn about pogroms and other iniquities suffered by the Jews, but also about the ancient customs and traditions of our longtime fellow citizens and about the perseverance, diligence and fortitude with which they resisted their difficult historical lot in society.

Synagogues: There are over 200 synagogues in the Czech Republic, three of them, one in Brno and two in Prague (Old New Synagogue and the Jubilee Synagogue), are being used for religious services.

The first synagogues on the territory of the present Czech Republic were plain wooden structures. One of them, although past later reconstruction, has been preserved in Vlachově Březí. In the Middle Ages, the wooden buildings were replaced by stone ones; the oldest remnant of those times is the Gothic Old New Synagogue in Prague, which dates back to the 13th century. There are also Gothic and Renaissance style buildings to be found here (the Pinkas Synagogue and the High Synagogue, the synagogue in Dolní Kounici near Brno and in Holešov). The synagogue in Boskovice is a typical example of baroque and rococo style, while the synagogue in Milevsko represents some features of cubism. However, the most over-represented synagogues are those in the historic style, such as the Maisl Synagogue in Prague. The latest synagogue to be built was one in Kamenici nad Lipou in the years 1937-8.

Apart from that, there is a Jewish Museum in Prague. Established in 1906 and surviving through the country's complicated history, it reveals the history of the Jewish community in Bohemia and Moravia to its visitors. The contact is: www.jewishmuseum.cz