The banded façade
Alternating painted colour bands, restored in 1996.
Credits to Mourad Ben Abdallah / Wikimedia Commons — Public domain · Rzntorbey — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Franck Schneider — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credits to Mourad Ben Abdallah / Wikimedia Commons — Public domain
Not on a passing visit. The hours published on tourist sites are the prayer timetable, not visiting hours, and the building is secured and does not take unarranged visitors. If your interest is architectural — which it probably is — the exterior gives you everything worth seeing: stand in the square, photograph the façade and the dome, and walk on to the Place Neuve. If you genuinely want the interior, write to the Geneva Jewish community well before you travel, and observe modest dress and a covered head for men if you are admitted.
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The Beth-Yaacov Synagogue is Geneva's principal synagogue, completed in **1859** for a small Ashkenazi community — some eighty-six households in 1857. It stands on the small square that carries its name, two minutes from the Place Neuve, between the business quarter and the Bastions park. For a visitor its interest is chiefly architectural: it was built in the **Moorish and Byzantine revival** manner that spread across nineteenth-century Europe, with a façade banded in two alternating painted colours, restored in 1996, four crenellated corner turrets each capped by a small dome, and a central dome carrying the Tablets of the Law. It is one of the few buildings in central Geneva that departs from severe Protestant stone — and the contrast with the cathedral of Saint-Pierre up on the hill is exactly what makes it worth a look. Practically, and plainly: this is a **working place of worship, not a sight on a tourist circuit**. There is no ticket desk and no open visiting; the times published are service times, not visiting hours, and the building has security arrangements. Realistically you see it from the square and photograph it from outside — a few free minutes on the walk between the station side of the centre, the Place Neuve and the Bastions.
Alternating painted colour bands, restored in 1996.
Crenellated corner turrets capped with small domes.
A dome carrying the Tablets of the Law above the square.
Place de la Synagogue 11, 1204 Geneva