Ghetto walls · Italy · 1516–1870
Venice and papal Rome confined Jewish residents while relying on their work.
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1516–1870
Ghetto walls · A city needs its neighbours, then locks them in
Venice and papal Rome confined Jewish residents while relying on their work.
Venice, 1516
Venice ordered Jews to reside in a designated district in 1516. Gates controlled movement, especially at night. The city admitted a community but imposed separation on it. The neighbourhood that gave the word ghetto its wider meaning was both a place of Jewish life and an instrument of restriction.
Rome, 1555
Pope Paul IV established Rome’s ghetto in 1555. Papal policy restricted Jewish residence and economic activity. Religious hierarchy acquired a daily geography: where a family could live and how its members could earn a living. Roman Jews remained part of the city under rules that denied equal belonging.
The wall is not the whole life
Behind the imposed limits, Jews sustained worship, learning and family life. The existence of these communities should not turn confinement into a quaint tradition. Rome’s enforced ghetto ended in 1870, when the city’s incorporation into the Italian kingdom displaced papal political authority.