The synagogue owes its charm to the determination with which a small, oppressed community, united by force in a small, congested area, expressed its desire for dignity and its conviction in its beliefs, reserving for a cluster of rooms the noblest of places and the most solicitous of cares, and using the riches available to it for this purpose.
Like all synagogues built before the Emancipation, the Cherasco synagogue has no visible façade on the street, but is located inside an 18th-century building in the area of the old ghetto.
It is set up on the top floor in observance of an ancient precept: nothing can be built above the temples. It is accessed through an anonymous wooden door and is placed at the top of a simple staircase.
The vestibule has a washstand, surmounted by a marble plaque commemorating the donation made by the De Benedetti brothers in 1797. At the side of the entrance door is the alms box.
A small staircase leads to the small women's gallery, screened by a simple wooden grille.
The prayer room, with a quadrangular floor plan, is lit by four large vertical windows, arranged along the south and east walls. The windows, which must originally have been screened by curtains, are surmounted along the entire perimeter of the wall by inscriptions in Hebrew framed by floral decorations.
Interestingly, there are four eighteenth-century mirrored wall sconces, which were intended to amplify the light from the candles. Also eighteenth-century are the wooden chandeliers.
Wooden benches, possibly of 17th-century make, are arranged along the walls.
The floor is of black and white two-coloured square tiles, the ceiling in white and blue stucco.
In the centre of the room, as per tradition, is the octagonal, canopied tevah made of carved and painted wood. The tevah of Cherasco has an essential ornamentation; the canopy, supported by slender, simple twisted columns with Corinthian-like capitals, has no refined decorative elements.
Placed at the centre of the east wall of the room, the Aron is made of wood and has a more articulated compositional form: the decoration of the wings is composed of three half-twisted columns, recreating the form of the Tablets of the Law, while at the sides are carved two half-twisted columns from which flames emerge; the whole is surmounted by a small porthole with coloured glass.
In synagogues of non-Reformed tradition, the women's prayer area is separated from the men's area. Often the women's gallery is located in an elevated gallery, but the two areas may also be contiguous, separated by a grating called a mechitzah (literally, 'partition'). The women's gallery in Cherasco is elevated and screened by a simple wooden grille.
UPCOMING SYNAGOGUE OPENINGS
Free guided tours from 10.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. (starting times: 10.30 a.m., 11.30 a.m,
12.30, 14.30, 15.30, 16.30, 17.30).
For info and guided tour bookings: cell. 3518767844 - info@cherasco1547.org
18 MAGGIO, 7 -14 SETTEMBRE, 12-26 OTTOBRE, 9 NOVEMBRE
Source: https://www.cherasco1547.org/