The Dohany Utca Synagogue - Budapest Royalty-Free Stock Photography

The biggest in Europe and the second biggest in the world, this arresting building, completed in 1862, by Viennese architect Ludwig Forster has a seat capacity for almost 3, 000 people. The exterior, with its onion domes and structural polychromy, seems a romantic fusion of pseudo-Moorish and pseudo-Byzantine, although the Budapest Jewish community was almost strictly Ashkenazi. In fact, through the twin towers are reminiscent of the bell towers on a Christian church, they are actually intended to evoke the two columns that fronted the Temple of Solomon.