Discovering Jewish Country Houses review – crumbling symbols of staggering success

Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire
Hélène Binet’s haunted photographs of spectacular country residences built by Jewish people across Europe are filled with the melancholic grandeur of fallen empires

All things considered, we Jews haven’t done too bad. Not that you need reminding. Every corner of the internet, from Reddit to X, is desperate to point out that Jewish people are apparently in control of the banks, Hollywood, the government and, ahem, art criticism. That’s the price you pay for being a successful immigrant.

And that success is nothing new. Swiss-French photographer Hélène Binet’s latest body of work documents a sweeping array of opulent, lavish country houses owned or built by Jews across Europe. Bankers, textile merchants, stockbrokers, politicians, the story of post-medieval Jewry is a tale filled with an awful lot of high achievers, and they built themselves some seriously swanky houses. A selection of Binet’s images has been hung in the most appropriate of settings; Waddesdon Manor, the wildly over the top 19th-century weekend party house of Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild.

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