MEIS - Museo Nazionale dell'Ebraismo Italiano e della Shoah

The Museo Nazionale dell'Ebraismo Italiano e della Shoah (MEIS) occupies a former Ferrara prison that held Jewish detainees under fascism. Opened in 2017, the museum interprets two millennia of Jewish life in Italy and the rupture brought by the racial laws.

Why it matters

MEIS is Italy's national museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah, established by parliament and located in Ferrara, a city whose Jewish community shaped and suffered the country's twentieth century. The museum interprets more than two thousand years of Jewish life, from ancient Rome to the postwar republic, and places the Shoah within a longer history of coexistence and persecution. Its building, a former prison in use from 1912 to 1992, held anti-fascists and Jewish detainees.

What to notice

The permanent exhibition “Ebrei, una storia italiana” presents Jewish experience from early Roman settlements through medieval communities, ghettos and emancipation. “1938. L'umanità negata” addresses the racial laws and their consequences in Ferrara and Italy. The conversion of the former prison preserves corridors, grilles and cell geometry beneath the museum's architectural design by Studio Arco and SCAPE, selected through an international competition in 2011.

Context and history

Parliament approved the museum project unanimously in 2003, initially conceiving a Holocaust museum; in 2006 its mandate expanded to encompass the full history of Jewish life in Italy. The former provincial prison opened in 1912, held Jewish detainees during the fascist period and closed in 1992. MEIS opened its first galleries on 13 December 2017, the first day of Hanukkah, in the presence of President Sergio Mattarella. Its interpretation links the history of Ferrara's Jewish community with national history.