The opening ceremony was led by Charlotte Knobloch, president of Central Council of Jews in Germany and head of Munich's Orthodox Jewish community.

The building is a cubic concrete structure clad with travertine stone in its lower part and topped by a glass cube.

The main portal was manufactured in Budapest and features Hebrew letters depicting the Ten Commandments.

In 2003, German authorities uncovered a plot by a group of neo-Nazis to bomb the ceremony to lay the cornerstone for the building.

Security concerns also led to the decision to house a memorial, to the more than 4,000 Jews of Munich who were killed in the Holocaust, in a tunnel between the synagogue and the Jewish community center.