If before it was mockingly said that in Vidin there is nothing else to see except for Baba Vida fortress, then this no longer applies. The abandoned synagogue, whose ghostly silhouette stuck out prominently at the heart of the Danube city, but which was left to crumble helplessly for over 80 years, now shines with a renewed glow.
The refurbished architectural gem is now the first stop for those arriving in the city, including foreigners, often Americans, disembarking from cruise ships. The difference, apart from its appearance, is that the synagogue is no longer a house of prayer, but a cultural center named after the artist Jules Pasquin. Thus, the building now joins the complex of historical landmarks in the old town next to the Baba Vida fortress and hopes to attract greater numbers of tourists. And there is certainly quite a lot of interest.

The building had not been restored as a house of prayer, as it used to be, on account of religious and historical reasons. It was constructed in around 1894 as a Jewish house of prayer with donations from Jewish merchants, who constituted a large part of the citizens who inhabited the quarter at that time. "The Jews were a large part of the Jewish community in the Kaleto district of Vidin. In 1950, however, it lost its main purpose as a house of prayer and was used as a warehouse for some time.
Thirty years later, the new owner, the Municipal Council of Vidin, commissioned a comprehensive project to adapt the building into a concert hall. The reconstruction began, but then stopped and the building was left to crumble, the director of the local Municipal Cultural Institute Yuliana Dimova explains: "The restoration in the form of a house of prayer cannot be carried out because according to the Jewish religion, when a temple is used for functions other than religious ones, it is not possible to restore it into a house of prayer again," she says.

A 10 million-lev donation from the EU
The restoration of the building after years of destruction became possible after the municipality acquired it. Shalom, the organization of Jews in Bulgaria, donated it at the end of 2017 with the condition that it be restored as a cultural center in the name of the artist Jules Pasquin. One of the stipulations for receiving EU funds for restoration is that the object is owned by the organization seeking EU funding.
So the municipality of Vidin applied under the European programme Regions in Growth (2014-2020) to finance its restoration and make it a tourist site. The total cost of the project is just over 10 million levs, of which 8.5 million levs is a grant from the EU and the rest - from the Ministry of Culture and the Regional Urban Development Fund. The restoration started at the end of 2020 and lasted for about 2,5 years.

Opportunity for tourism
The restored synagogue became part of a complex of historic sites in the old town that are within walking distance of each other. These are the Baba Vida Fortress, the Konaka Historical Museum, the St. Demetrius Cathedral, the Art Gallery, the Cross Barracks Ethnographic Museum, the Ottoman Warehouse Archaeological Museum, the Pazvantoglu Mosque and Library and the five gates/chapels.
The attractions as well as the location of Vidin municipality - at Romania's doorstep - allow for year-round activity of the tourism sector, the institute says, and emphasizes the attractive opportunity for a combination of several types of tourism: wine, cultural, religious and cruise.

A place for culture instead of prayers
The synagogue houses a permanent exhibition for tourists, which is divided into three themes: the rescue of Bulgarian Jews, the building itself, and the biography of Jules Pasquin, after whom the cultural center is named. A world famous artist, Pasquin was born in Vidin, and studied in Vienna and Munich. Although an American citizen, he lived in Paris most of his life. He was friends with Modigliani, Ernest Hemingway and Picasso; his family were so-called Sephardic Jews who hailed from the Iberian Peninsula.
Besides being a tourist destination, the building also aims to be a cultural point for the city, where exhibitions, literary readings, performances and concerts can be held. In the future, the municipality plans to give space in the cultural center to young people, providing them with a place to present their creative projects and form workshops.

The history of the building
The Vidin synagogue was built in 1894, similar to the synagogue in Budapest, and its architects were the famous Ferdinand and Francesco of the time. The shape of the arched windows, the large round window above the main entrance and the ending multi-layered cornice of multi-stage Lombard arches are elements of the facades in both buildings.
The construction of the altar (colored blue, red and bronze) was carried out by Max Verich, a Czech sculptor who taught in Vidin. The timber was shipped from Transylvania and Hungary, while the lamps, chandeliers and chairs were from Vienna and elsewhere in Austria. It was built opposite the Baba Vida fortress and the main entrance from the Danube to the city of Vidin.

The building was a house of prayer, which consisted of one ground floor and galleries on the second level. It was built entirely with brickwork and covered with a gabled wooden roof with ceramic red tiles. An architectural survey was made of the original wooden structure, but the roof is not extant today. It was removed at the beginning of the 1980s when restoration of the building began under the project of NIPC (National Institute for Monuments of Culture).
The synagogue functioned as such until about 1950. After that, it was converted into a warehouse for theater sets. Around 1980 the restoration of the building began. A project for its restoration was prepared by the design department of NIPC. The idea was to turn the building into a concert hall due to its very good acoustics. Construction began with the strengthening of the load-bearing brick walls by cutting and pouring reinforced concrete columns, reinforcing the walls and adding metal elements. The roof of the building was removed to cast a reinforced concrete cornice to connect the new reinforced concrete columns and on which to build the new roof. The metal trusses to construct the new roof structure were delivered. Ten years later (in 1990), the property was repossessed and the building was left abandoned and without any restoration. And so this continued until 2020, when its restoration began with EU funding, made possible after Shalom donated it to the municipality.

The Vidin synagogue was declared an architectural and artistic monument of culture with the category of "national importance" in 1964 and 1975 respectively. It has the status of an immovable group cultural property along with its garden. It is the second largest synagogue in Bulgaria after Sofia's, measuring 36.50 m by 22 m in plan and 21 m in height.
If before it was mockingly said that in Vidin there is nothing else to see except for Baba Vida fortress, then this no longer applies. The abandoned synagogue, whose ghostly silhouette stuck out prominently at the heart of the Danube city, but which was left to crumble helplessly for over 80 years, now shines with a renewed glow.
The refurbished architectural gem is now the first stop for those arriving in the city, including foreigners, often Americans, disembarking from cruise ships. The difference, apart from its appearance, is that the synagogue is no longer a house of prayer, but a cultural center named after the artist Jules Pasquin. Thus, the building now joins the complex of historical landmarks in the old town next to the Baba Vida fortress and hopes to attract greater numbers of tourists. And there is certainly quite a lot of interest.
