The Jewish Quarter

The Jewish Quarter in Prague is one of the oldest and best preserved Jewish areas in Europe.  It has been a Jewish ghetto for 800 some years.  I walked through the Jewish quarter on Sunday afternoon, after church but I didn't go into any of the museums or buildings because it was a bit spendy (about $30) and the Prague Card was only good for 15% off.

Spanish Synagogue

It would have been fun to see some of this stuff but what I really would have liked to see was the cemetery.  Unfortunately, you could only see the cemetery if you bought the combined ticket for all of the sights and I wasn't sure that it was worth it.  The cemetery is worth seeing because it is so old and so limited in space.  Apparently you aren't allowed to rearrange the graves once they are buried.  But, since people kept dying (over the last 800 years or so) and since there was no additional land available, they decided to solve the problem by burying in tiers.  They just buried people in layers and there are apparently now up to 12 layers deep in graves.  As a result, the grave yard is heaped and piled and grave stones are piled on top of each other and leaning against one another and are, altogether, very picturesque.  If you go to this link, you will find the blog of someone who went to all of the sites and took a lot of really interesting pictures of the graveyard.  There are a couple of other pictures here and here as well.  The pictures below are from my walk through the Jewish Quarter and are just pretty things I saw as I went along.