Josefov Jewish Quarter

Jews settled beneath Prague Castle by the 10th century and were confined to a walled ghetto here from the 13th, enduring pogroms, expulsions and floods. Named Josefov after Emperor Joseph II, who eased some restrictions in the 1780s, the quarter was largely demolished in a slum-clearance around 1900, leaving six synagogues, the town hall and the cemetery. During the occupation the Nazis spared these buildings to assemble a planned 'Museum of an Extinct Race', shipping in confiscated Jewish treasures from across Bohemia — the reason Prague holds one of the richest Judaica collections on earth. The Pinkas Synagogue now bears the handwritten names of nearly 80,000 Czech and Moravian Holocaust victims.