Ghetto di Venezia

Venice's Ghetto was established by a Senate decree of 29 March 1516 around a former foundry in Cannaregio. Its history of confinement and emancipation is carried by the quarter's five historic synagogues and by Arbit Blatas's Holocaust memorials in Campo del Ghetto Nuovo.

Why it matters

The Senate ordered the city's Jews to live in an enclosed area around the foundry, or getto, with gates locked from dusk to dawn and guards paid by residents. The quarter remained the only part of Venice where Jews could legally reside until the late eighteenth century. Its crowded, tall buildings and five synagogues reflect the community that developed there. During the German occupation, Jews were deported from Venice; the community records that 246 members died in the camps. The Jewish Community of Venice, today numbering about 450 members, continues to maintain its institutions in the Ghetto.

What to notice

Campo del Ghetto Nuovo is lined by low palazzi and taller tenement buildings, which grew upward within the quarter's limited boundaries. Arbit Blatas's seven bronze bas-reliefs, installed in 1980, form a Holocaust memorial cycle. The Last Train, a sculpture by Blatas designed with architect Franca Semi, was dedicated in 1993 by President Oscar Scalfaro, fifty years after the 1943 deportations. The Ghetto Vecchio, established in 1541, was a second enclosure. The five historic synagogues are Spanish, Levantine, German, Canton and Italian.

Context and history

Jews traded in Venice for centuries before the 1516 decree. Two enlargements followed: the Ghetto Vecchio in 1541 and the Ghetto Nuovissimo in 1633. When Napoleon's forces entered Venice in 1797, they tore down the gates and planted a tree of liberty; a census that September counted 1,626 residents. Emancipation brought the community into public life, until the racial laws of 1938 and deportations from 1943 devastated it. After the war, the community rebuilt its institutions. The quarter's historic streets, squares and synagogue buildings have survived as an unusually intact urban ensemble.