Judenplatz

Until 1421 this square was not called Judenplatz but Schulhof, the school yard, because the synagogue stood here. It was the centre of a Jewish community recorded from the early 13th century, with a Talmudic school famous across Central Europe.

1The Vienna Gesera

In 1420 Duke Albert V ordered the persecution of the city's Jews. Many of those who had taken refuge in the synagogue took their own lives rather than fall into their persecutors' hands. On 12 March 1421 around two hundred survivors were burned alive at Erdberg, outside the walls. The community was wiped out and the synagogue demolished.

Look at the house at number 2, "Zum großen Jordan": on its façade a late 15th-century relief with a Latin inscription celebrates that massacre as a purification. Next door, at number 6, a plaque put up in 1998 by Cardinal Schönborn acknowledges the Church's guilt.

2The nameless library

The concrete block in the centre is the memorial to the Austrian victims of the Shoah, designed by the British artist Rachel Whiteread and unveiled in 2000. It remembers some 65,000 Austrian Jews who were murdered. Its walls are shelves of books turned inwards: stories that can never be read. Beneath your feet, excavations from 1995 to 1998 uncovered the foundations of the medieval synagogue, which you can see in the museum on the square.

3What to look for

• The memorial's door, double-leaved and with no handle.
• The names of the places of murder carved around the base.
• The relief on the Zum großen Jordan house, at the corner of the square.