I’m glad to see that there is publicity in the Guardian to the fate which has befallen the Bevis Marks Synagogue which is unlucky enough to be in the Square Mile which has been designated as appropriate for skyscrapers, which get taller and taller, crowding out the Synagogue and taking away its access to daylight in the most brutal and cavalier way, as if the historic environment and the places where the City worships are of no consequence in its pursuit of Mammon:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
I’m also glad to see the article in the Guardian but puzzled by the assertion – “Now it is the only synagogue in Europe, and possibly the world, that has held continuous worship throughout its existence.”
To my knowledge the Garnethill Synagogue in Glasgow has held continuous worship throughout its 150+ years existence. I’d be surprised if there were not also one in Manchester.
Yes, good point. Institutions sometime make assertions like this which sound convincing until you examine them properly. Charles
It may be true as it is a specific statement: “that has held continuous worship throughout its existence” i.e. from its construction in 1701, well before Glasgow. There are older synagogues in Europe that have survived, one of the oldest being the Gothic Alt-Neu Schul in Prague dating from the 1200s, but worship was interrupted many times during periods of persecution like the Crusades and of course the Holocaust.
Yes, I thought of Prague and its wonderful cemetery, but assume that services have been interrupted. Venice ? Charles
But more to the point of your post, Charles, you are right: There is no valid reason for more office towers to be built in the City. There is already a glut of office space exacerbated by Brexit as companies continue to move more and more workers and jobs onto the Continent. Post-COVID there is an ongoing revision of thought about who really needs to be in the office all the time anyway, further reducing demand for office space by orders of magnitude.
Venice would have been interrupted at many points, by the Church and again by the Nazis.