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The sight of hundreds of graves, their leaning headstones crumbling on top of each other, is a moving and unforgettable experience – a testament to the treatment of the Jews in Prague, confined to their own ghetto even in death. Although there is no definite record of the number of burial sites here, to appreciate the depth of the graveyard, compare the gravestones’ height with that of the street level on U Starého hřbitova.

Attached to the Old Jewish Cemetery, Europe’s oldest surviving synagogue has witnessed a turbulent history, including pogroms and fire, and has often been a place of refuge for the city’s beleaguered Jewish community. Its name derives from the fact that another synagogue was built after this one, taking the title “new”, but this was later destroyed. It is still the religious centre for Prague’s small, present-day Jewish community (see Features in the Old-New Synagogue).

This lovely Gothic convent, now part of the National Gallery, is full of spectacular altarpieces and wall panels, as well as original 13th-century cloisters and chapels. The artworks here, as part of the gallery’s collection, comprise some of the best 19th-century Czech art.

The hands of the town hall’s Rococo clock turn backwards, as the Hebrew letters on its face are read from right to left. The building was one of Mordecai Maisel’s gifts to his community in the late 16th century (see Mordecai Maisel), but it was renovated in Baroque style in 1763.

Constructed along with the town hall with funds from Mordecai Maisel, the High Synagogue was built in elegant Renaissance fashion. Subsequent reconstructions updated the exterior, but the interior retains its original stucco vaults. Inside there are also impressive Torah scrolls and mantles.

Rudolf II gave Mordecai Maisel permission to build his private synagogue here in the late 16th century, in gratitude for the Jewish mayor’s financial help in Bohemia’s war against the Turks. At the time of its construction it was the largest synagogue in Prague, until fire destroyed it and much of the ghetto in 1869. It was later rebuilt in Neo-Gothic style. Inside is a wonderful collection of Jewish silverwork and other items such as candlesticks and ceramics, much of it looted by the Nazis from other synagogues across Bohemia. Ironically, the Third Reich planned to build a museum in Prague, dedicated to the Jews as an “extinct race”.

Built in the early 1900s in mock Romanesque fashion, the Ceremonial Hall was home to the Jewish community’s Burial Society. The exhibits inside detail the complex Jewish rituals for preparing the dead for the grave.

Abutting the Old Jewish Cemetery, this Baroque single-nave building was constructed in 1694 on site of a school and prayer hall (klausen ) where Rabbi Loew taught the cabala . Like most of the synagogues in the area, it is now houses Jewish exhibitions, including prints and manuscripts.

After World War II, this 15th-century building became a monument to the estimated 80,000 Czech and Moravian victims of the Holocaust – the names and dates of all those known to have perished either in the Terezín concentration camp or other extermination camps across Eastern Europe are written on the wall as a moving memorial. Equally moving is the exhibition of writings and paintings done by the children confined in Terezín. The Communists shut it down for “restoration” following the Six Day War in Israel in 1967. It was finally reopened in 1991.

The opulent Moorish interior with its swirling arabesques and stucco decoration gives this late 19th-century synagogue its name. It stands on the site of a building known as the Old School, Prague’s first Jewish house of worship. František Škroup, composer of the Czech national anthem, was the organist here in the mid-19th century.