A lavish volume in Phaidon's great tradition. Authoritative and lucid text too. A fine volume that is far too good to sit on a coffee table!

NO OF PAGES: 240 SUB CAT I: Synagogues SUB CAT II: SUB CAT III: DESCRIPTION: More than a gloriously illustrated celebration of the Jewish synagogue, this stirring album charts Jewish history, culture and worship through the prism of Jews' houses of worship. Beginning with Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, completed in 950 BCE, British architectural historian Meek surveys early synagogues of the Greco-Roman world, ornate Islamic-style temples built under Moslem rule in Spain, Renaissance and Baroque prayer-houses of Venice and Padua. We visit the Great Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam (1671-75), spiritual center of western Sephardim, the extraordinary wooden temples of Poland, built as early as 1642 (all torched by the Germans in WWII), Marc Chagall's stained-glass windows depicting the Twelve Tribes of Israel in a Jerusalem synagogue and modernist temples in the U.S. designed by Walter Gropius, Philip Johnson and Frank Lloyd Wright. More than 200 prints, architectural drawings, paintings and photographs, most in color, complement an informal text to evoke the synagogue as a reservoir of spiritual strength and renewal.NOTES: Purchased from Half Price Books. SUBTITLE: