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The Veneto region, as its name suggests, makes a visit to the mysterious and inspiring Venice a must, even inspiring a certain William Shakespeare to set several of his greatest plays there (Othello, The Merchant of Venice) without ever staying there. But that doesn’t make Verona jealous, since his most famous play, Romeo and Juliet, is set there. Palaces, artists, political intrigues, ...
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Under the protection of the Gonzaga dukes, Jewish life flourished in the city of Mantua during the course of centuries. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, some 7,000 Jews lived in the city, representing 8% of the population. Nevertheless, the walls of the ghetto, established in 1612, fell only with the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte’s soldiers. Unfortunately, not much remains ...
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The only noteworthy place of remembrance in the area surrounding Milan is the small town of Soncino in the province of Cremona. In the fifteenth century, a Hebrew printing house operated there, created by the rabbi and doctor Israel Nathan of Speyer, who was originally in this Rhenish city. The business was eventually forced to leave the duchy of Milan, but the Soncinos, the dynasty of ...
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The Jewish presence in Milan dates back to the Roman period. Hebrew inscriptions from this period have been found by archaeologists. A Milanese synagogue dated back to at least the 4th century, but it was destroyed by local residents. Milanese Jews continued to live there over the centuries. It was not until the 13th century, with the arrival of more Jews in the Lombardy region, that the ...
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Until the middle of the nineteenth century and the unification of Italy, very few Jews lived in Lombardy. Today, however, Milan represents the second largest Jewish population in Italy after Rome, with some 9,000 people of some thirty different origins. A large number of these Jews came from Egypt, Lybia, and Iran. It is a dynamic community reflecting the energy of the Lombard capital itself.
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The Ashkenazic synagogue of the lovely, rich city of Casale Monferrato on the floodplain of the Po River was constructed in 1596, in the center of the old Jewish quarter. It is one of the oldest in Piedmont. The discreet exterior facade has nothing remarkable to recommend it, but the interior with its numerous gilding wood decorations and frescoes is one of the most remarkable in Italy. After ...
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The of this administrative center is unique for two reasons. First, its liturgy is special: called astigiano in Italian and Appam in Hebrew, its language is named after the initials of the three small towns where it is still actively spoken (Asti, Fossano, Moncalvo). Annie Sacerdoti and Luca Fiorentino note in their Guida all’ Italia Ebraica (Guide to Jewish Italy) that it is a ...
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The Jewish presence in Mondovi appears to date back to the end of the 16th century, and they played an active part in the town’s economic life. Among them was Donato Levi, who founded the Mondovi Bank in 1820. Other areas of activity included silk, ceramics and metalworking. The small Jewish community disappeared at the turn of the 20th century, with the last rabbi officiating there ...
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In the small town of Cherasco, in the province of Cuneo, you can make an appointment to visit a very interesting on private property. Hardly bigger than a living room, the synagogue features magnificent woodwork and gilding. A plaque at the entrance commemorates the founding of the synagogue in 1797. The baroque tevah in the room’s center is made of polychrome wood. The aron has finely ...
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Saluzzo’s small Jewish quarter maintains its former appearance in the area around Via Deportati Ebrei. In one of the courtyards on this street stands a building containing a on its third floor. Constructed in the eighteenth century and remodeled in 1832, the prayer hall was designed to accommodate more than 300 persons. Notice the beautiful carved door, as well as the gilt wood aron and ...
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The most elegant of the region’s Baroque synagogues is found in the little city of Carmagnola near Turin. The city’s Jewish community was forced to live in a ghetto beginning in 1724. The temple is on the second floor of an eighteenth-century house opposite the former entrance to the ghetto. Passing through a vestibule decorated with frescoes, you will enter a prayer hall almost ...
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Turin is one of the finest examples of the crossroads of Jewish cultures: Ashkenazim from the north, Provençals following the expulsion, Sephardim following the Inquisition, Italians for 2 millennia… Turin was first the capital of the Duchy de Savoy, then of the Kingdom of Sardinia. The Jewish presence was recorded by the Bishop Maximus of Turin as early as the fourth century. The only ...
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Unjustly slighted as a tourist destination, Piedmont is one of the richest regions of Jewish heritage in Italy, with magnificent small Baroque synagogues like those of Carmagnola, Casale Monferrato, Cherasco, Mondovi, and Saluzzo. In 1848, the Piedmontese Jews became the first in Italy to definitively obtain full equality. The main restrictions on their residence or authorized economic ...
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Modena has the great merit of being known for quite different monuments. Architectural and religious monuments, as in many Italian cities, and gastronomic masterpieces such as its famous vinegar. But there are also contemporary monuments that you can take the time to admire when they’re not speeding past you, the Ferraris and other Lamborghinis and Maseratis built in the region… ...
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Ferrara, a sublime city with a medieval centre listed as a World Heritage Site, does not appear to be a vast, museum-like enclosure encircled by a city. On the contrary, its historic centre is delicately interlaced with long, beautiful streets leading to monuments and a gentle way of life that is far from fleeting and to which its inhabitants cling, as did, despite everything, the characters ...
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Bologna is famous for having been one of Europe’s leading cities in the Middle Ages. Thanks to its large population living within its walls, the wealth of local agriculture, the development of trade with the other cities of Emilia-Romagna, but also and perhaps above all to the dynamism provided by its university, the oldest in Europe. History of the Jews of Bologna The first traces of a ...
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The rich region of Emilia-Romagna is definitely worth a week visit. Located on the south of the floodplain of the Po River, it includes cities like Bologna, home to a museum that is a model of modern installation techniques and location of the ruins of an ancient ghetto in the heart of the city, and above all, Ferrara, once a very important center of Italian Judaism. A leisurely tour of the ...
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The old Jewish community of Pisa grew with the arrival of Jews from Spain at the beginning of the sixteenth century, but, with the development of Livorno, steadily decreased in numbers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The current synagogue, constructed in 1756, has been remodeled several times, most notably at the end of the nineteenth century.
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A visit to Livorno is required in the name of remembrance, even if the urban renewal projects of the early twentieth century around the port and the bombings of the Second World War in 1943-1944 have destroyed most of the old city center, including Jewish Livorno’s Grand Synagogue. In no other Italian city did the Jews have such a significant role as in Livorno, where they were never ...
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Siena’s ghetto was created at the same time as that of Florence in 1571. The large Jewish presence in the city is verified by documents from the beginning of the thirteenth century that mention a universita iudarum. The Jewish quarter is in the heart of the city, near the Piazza Campo and between the present-day Via San Martino and Via di Salicotto. The narrow little streets and tall ...
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Located at the extreme south of Tuscany among the hills and cypresses, the borough of Pitigliano rises from a rocky pinnacle. Once called “little Jerusalem” by Tuscan Jews, the nickname points to the historical importance of Pitigliano’s Jewish community here, formed by those fleeing the Papal States after the edicts of 1555. The Jews remained here for almost four ...
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The former ghetto of Florence was located in the heart of the old city center near the market in a zone totally destroyed and the end of the twentieth century, situated today between Via Brunelleschi, the Piazza della Repubblica, and Via Roma. Bernardo Buontalento, the grand duke’s architect, was commissioned to design the ghetto. The streets accessing the residential blocks were ...
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With cities like Livorno and Florence, Tuscany represents an important part of the history of Jewish life in Italy, although evidence of the longstanding Jewish presence here is less abundant than in Venice and Piedmont. The large free port city of Livorno was the largest Jewish city of Italy between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The powerful Spanish-Portuguese community had what ...
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Capital of the Algarve region in southern Portugal, the city of Faro was home to a large Jewish community, expelled in 1497. A number of them continued to live there as conversos. Jews did not resettle “officially” in the city until the 19th century. In the fifteenth century, the time of its peak, Faro was a well-known center of Hebrew printing. In 1481, Samuel Porteira printed ...
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If Jews had to flee the city in the 16th century, Lisbon was also the city that welcomed Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition or the transit of Jews fleeing Nazism to the American continent. But since the turn of the 21st century it has been experiencing a renaissance of its Jewish life. In December 2024, a ceremony was held in Lisbon in memory of the boat Serpa Pinto, which transported many ...
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The Jews who lived within the walls of the little hilltop town of Castelo de Vide were engaged in the traditional activities of commerce, crafts, and sometimes medicine. The population grew after 1492 with the arrival of Jews from Spain. The former Judaria is fairly easy to identify around the (Praço de Comércio). Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the characteristic little ...
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Although there was an organized community in Tomar at the turn of the fourteenth century, indicated by the inscription on the tombstone of Rabbi Joseph of Tomar, who died in Faro in 1315, it was not until 1430 that the Jews of Tomar had the means to undertake the construction of the synagogue. A building that still stands today. It was completed in 1460. After the expulsion of 1496, the ...
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The little community of Belmonte of between 100 and 300 souls was “discovered” in 1920 by the engineer Samuel Schwarz. Its existence was revealed to the world by Frédéric Brenner’s short film The Last Marranos in 1990. The Jews of Belmonte are one of the last groups bearing witness to the precarious life of Jews hunted by an all-powerful Inquisition and Church. They lived ...
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Porto is the capital of northern Portugal. It is the country’s second largest city after Lisbon. It is best known for its historic monuments and its wine. The Jewish presence dates back to the Middle Ages. The oldest Jewish quarter was located within the walls of the old city, where the Rua de Santa Ana is today, close to the Romanesque cathedral. In 1386, Dom Joao I granted land to the ...
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Although the Judería in Hervás was small, a local proverb that “in Hervás there are many Jews” made the quarter famous. It stood close to the Ambroz River near the town’s exit. The and are the most picturesque, with a fine fountain dedicated to Jewish-Christian friendship and two-story brick and chestnut-wood houses with many flowers. Local bakers continue to make an ...
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