Jews from Germany began to settle in Ferrara as early as the thirties of the sixteenth century. The synagogue of German rite, after alternating events, was brought to the complex of Via dei Sabbioni (via Mazzini) in 1603, before the functions were held in an oratory in via della Vittoria.

The hall underwent various alterations in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The last restorations date back to 1945, to repair the damage suffered during the Second World War, in particular the invasion of fascist troops on 21 September 1941.

The German synagogue is an elegant rectangular hall with barrel vaults. The left wall is decorated with stucco by Gaetano Davia – also the author of some decorations of the Teatro Comunale Claudio Abbado in Ferrara – while on the right wall there are five windows and as many semicircular windows from which the light filters: their number symbolises the five books of the Torah. Behind the upper part of the entrance wall is the matroneo, no longer in use for worship but included in the museum itinerary. Verses from the Psalms are engraved along the upper perimeter of the room. On the wall in front of the entrance, behind the marble balustrade from the former Italian Temple, are the bimah (the tribune from which the Torah is read) and the 17^th-century wooden aron (cabinet where the Torah scrolls are kept).