Touro Synagogue, consecrated in 1763, is the oldest surviving Jewish house of worship in the United States and a National Historic Site. Designed by Peter Harrison, the finest colonial architect in America, in a Sephardic style influenced by Dutch and English synagogues, the building is at once a religious monument and a masterpiece of Georgian architecture. The pale interior, with its gallery supported by twelve Ionic columns for the twelve tribes of Israel, is one of the most beautiful 18th-century rooms in the country.
The Washington letter of 1790, displayed here in replica (the original is in the collection of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati), makes Touro a pilgrimage site for students of American civil liberty. The congregation it was written to still uses the building — Touro Synagogue is an active synagogue as well as a historic site. Tours run several times daily in summer; the combination of the architecture, the history, and the living congregation makes this one of Newport's most rewarding stops.