THE ENIGMA OF ARAGON SYNAGOGUE IN KASTORIA, GREECE: RECONSTRUCTION OF A LOST HERITAGE THROUGH ARCHITECTURE, ARCHIVAL RESEARCH AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
Études balkaniques (Sofia) 2026, N 2, pp. 343-366
DOI: https://doi.org/10.62761/645.EB.LXII2.04
Elias V. MESSINAS 
Department of Interior Design, Faculty of Design, Holon Institute of Technology (HIT), Israel
E-mail: messinase@hit.ac.il
Abstract: In the wake of the Holocaust in Greece, Jewish communities were nearly erased, and the subsequent post-Second World War reconstruction of historic city centers further intensified the loss of Jewish architectural heritage. Synagogues were vandalized, abandoned, demolished, or repurposed. Despite the establishment of Jewish institutions to reclaim this property, in many cases, no physical traces survived. This study draws on a thirty-year research and documentation project initiated by the author to record and reconstruct lost synagogues throughout Greece. This study examines the case of the “lost” synagogue Aragon in Kastoria, northern Greece in the region of Western Makedonia, a 19th-century building demolished in the late 1940s or early 1950s. It demonstrates how fragmented and often contradictory sources – including film footage, topographic surveys, archival sketches, photographs, and survivor testimony – can be systematically integrated through digital technologies to produce a carefully argued architectural reconstruction. The recent rediscovery of the Shemtov Samuel archive provided critical evidence that clarified long-standing uncertainties and allowed the reconstruction to reach a high degree of fidelity. Rather than presenting digital modeling as the production of a definitive replica, the study frames reconstruction as a transparent interpretive process that negotiates evidentiary limitations while transforming architectural absence into structured knowledge. The Aragon case offers a replicable methodological framework for the digital recovery of marginalized and demolished heritage sites in Greece and beyond.
Keywords: cultural heritage, Jewish heritage, digital technologies, architecture, Greece