In this little town, as in so many other towns in Venetia, there was a small but flourishing Jewish community. One can see the street of the former synagogue, whose interior ornaments and decoration were all sent to Israel after the war and installed in the Italian Temple Rehov Hillel in Jerusalem.
Plus d'infosContenus associés au mot-clé “monument”
Venice
On 20 March 1516, Zaccaria Dolfin, an influential Venetian patrician, announced a radical turn in the history of the Jew of the Serenissima: “It is necessary to send all the Jews (zudei) to stay in the geto novo, which is like a stronghold, and to make drawbridges and to surround it with wall so that there will be only one gate that will need to be monitored, and only the boats of the ...
Plus d'infosPadua
In the fourteenth century, Padua was one of the great centers of medieval Judaism, with a celebrated rabbinical academy where students from all over Europe came to study. These students were also attracted to Padua by its very old medical school, the only one to accept Jews as students. The Venetian conquest in 1405 obliged the Jews to sell their homes and lands and limited the interest rates ...
Plus d'infosVeneto
Plus d'infos
Mantua
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, come 7000 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 of ...
Plus d'infosSoncino
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 at this Rhenish city. The business was eventually forced to leave the duchy of Milan, but the Soncinos, the dynasty of ...
Plus d'infosMilan
All of Milan’s synagogues are modern. The Grand Synagogue opened in 1892, burned down during World War II, and was later reconstructed with a lovely facade by Luca Beltrami. Of Milan’s six other temples, two are Persian synagogues.
Plus d'infosLombardy
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 9000 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.
Plus d'infosCasale Monferrato
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 gild wood decorations and frescoes is one of the most remarkable in Italy. After ...
Plus d'infosAsti
The synagogue 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 ...
Plus d'infosMondovi
The small synagogue of Mondovi is a jewel of Piedmontese Baroque architecture, more harmonious overall than that of the nearby administrative center Cuneo. A balustrade surrounds the octagonal carved wooden bimah in the center of the hall. Illuminated by five large crystal lamps, the right wall is decorated with fourteen trompe l’oeil windows crowned with Hebrew verses that face the ...
Plus d'infosCherasco
In the small town of Cherasco in the province of Cuneo, you can make an appointment to visit a very interesting synagogue 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 ...
Plus d'infosSaluzzo
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 synagogue 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 ...
Plus d'infosCarmagnola
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 ...
Plus d'infosTurin
Turin, the capital of Piedmont, is a good point of departure for visiting other Jewish places of remembrance in the region. Turin was first the capital of the Duché de Savoie, 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 trace of Jewish presence to have been recorded then on only appeared a thousand ...
Plus d'infosPiedmont
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 ...
Plus d'infosModena
Modena’s former Jewish quarter became the ghetto in 1638. The narrow medieval streets have been completely opened up, widened during the vast renewal projects of the early twentieth century that give the city its appearance today. A beautiful oriental-style synagogue stands in the Piazza Mazzini, which is located on part of the former ghetto. Constructed between 1869 and 1873 on plans ...
Plus d'infosFerrara
The Jewish quarter of Ferrara, along with that of Venice, is one of the largest and best preserved in Italy. The Jews of Ferrara were not forced to live in the quarter until the beginning of the seventeenth century. As the capital city of d’Este dukes of 1598, the city was a center of Italian and European Judaism, with more than 2000 Jews of a population of 30000 during its golden age ...
Plus d'infosBologna
The first Jewish presence in Bologna is attested in an Epistle by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan towards the end of the fourth century. The former Jewish quarter of Bologna lies near the famous Due Torri, in the area marked today by Via Zamboni and Via Oberdan. It consists of a warren of small streets whose eloquent names such as Via del Giudei or Via dell’Inferno evoke the ...
Plus d'infosEmilia-Romagna
The rich region of Emilia-Romagna is definitely worth a two or three-day 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 ...
Plus d'infosPisa
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.
Plus d'infosLivorno
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 ...
Plus d'infosSiena
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 ...
Plus d'infosPitigliano
Locates 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 centuries, ...
Plus d'infosFlorence
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 ...
Plus d'infosTuscany
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 ...
Plus d'infosRome
The Jews in the capital of Italy are perhaps the oldest Romans of all. They have been settled in the same ancient neighborhoods in the heart of the Eternal City for 2000 years, making their homes in the former ghetto, in Trastevere, and on both sides of the Tiber River where it is crossed by the Ponte Fabricio or Ponte Quattro Capi. Not only one of the oldest communities of the peninsula, ...
Plus d'infosFaro
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 ...
Plus d'infosLisbon
The , designed by the architect Ventura Terra, was built in 1904. Its discreet facade opens onto a courtyard. The interior, built on the traditional plan of Ashkenazic synagogues, is decorated in the neo-oriental style. There is also a small oratory frequented by Jews of Ashkenazic origin on Rua Elias Garcia. In the (Museu Nacional d’Arte Antigua), note the figure carrying a book in ...
Plus d'infosCastelo de Vide
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 market square (Praço de Comércio). Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries the characteristic ...
Plus d'infos