Through photographs and drawings it can be shown that architectural materials and details of synagogues follow the general history of architecture, as is exemplified in the synagogues of Europe from medieval through contemporary times. The synagogues of thirteenth century Eastern Europe have the ribbed vaulted roof structure typical of period churches. The bimah of a venetian synagogue of the middle seventeenth century has features typical of Italian renaissance architecture. The Rococo ark from another synagogue in Venice but built in the eighteenth century shows that in a given location, synagogue design followed the path of architecture as a whole. In Amsterdam in 1925, a reform synagogue might have been virtually indistinguishable from its Christian counterpart except for the presence of the bimah. In the same city, a synagogue built by a more traditional congregation in 1936 shows the definite influence of the Modernist philosophy. Finally, the design of a synagogue interior by Louis Kahn shows the same concern for light and the formal articulation of space that he brought to his churches and secular structures. / Master of Architecture