Historically, this town served as a center of the Liptov County, where Jews were well respected and socially integrated. Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš became the first town in Hungary to elect a Jewish mayor (Isaac Diner, 1865), three years before Jews acquired civil rights in the country. The synagogue, constructed in the town center, is a blend of various building stages. The original structure was destroyed by fire in 1878. Rebuilt, it was again damaged by fire in 1906. The free-standing structure, with tetra-styled portico with Ionic capitals, topped by a tympanum, originating from the first building stage was altered. The resultant building is harmonic masterpiece fusing the original neo-Classical building and with Art Nouveau reconstruction. From studying historical photo-documentation, we can conclude that after the first fire, in 1878, a conventional women’s gallery structure supported by cast-iron columns was built into the sanctuary and was damaged by the second fire of 1906. The second reconstruction, supervised by the Budapest-based synagogue architect Lipót Baumhorn, utilized the left-over shell of the neo-Classical building and inserted his favorite planning scheme: a central dome, carried by four pillars that also support the women’s gallery. The aron hakodesh and the bimah, located in the east of the sanctuary, form one unit, as typical for Neolog synagogues. Behind them Baumhorn added a small room for storage of Torah scrolls. This is clearly visible, on the eastern rear, where he additionally attached three projections; on the sides are stair-towers, typical of the architect’s planning scheme. The synagogue contained the original furnishing until the 1980s; during the 1990s it underwent a partial restoration for cultural purposes.
Liptovský Mikuláš [Hung.: Liptószentmiklós]
