Not one of the regions where Slovenian Jewish life was most intense, you’ll find traces of it in the towns of Koper, Nova Gorica, Piran and Stanjel.
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Lendava
The Lendava city council is working to renovate the old synagogue, built in 1866, and turn it into a cultural center featuring a permanent exhibition on local Jewish history. Seriously damaged by the Germans during the war, the synagogue was later sold to the city by the Federation of Yougoslav Jewish Communities, which then used it as a warehouse. The former Jewish school, active until the ...
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Maribor
The Jewish settlement in the medieval fortress of Maribor near the Austrian border dates back at least to the thirteenth century. After their expulsion by Austrian emperor Maximilian I, Maribor’s Jews headed for Italy and Hungary. The Morpurgos, one of the most famous families in Trieste, Split, and even Gorizia, was among them: their names derive directly from Maribor, their city of ...
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Ljubljana
The only remaining traces of a prior Jewish presence in Ljubljana are the names of two narrow streets in the city center, Street of the Jews (Zidovska ulica) and Passage of the Jews (Zidovska steza), the place of the medieval ghetto until the 1515 expulsion. The remains of a neighborhood of about thirty houses have apparently been found beneath the Baroque buildings here, constructed in ...
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Central and Northeast Slovenia
In this region, there are few traces of Jewish life in Kidiricevo, Murska Sobota and Ptuj. However, Lendava and Maribor still have synagogues. The synagogue in Maribor is one of the oldest in Europe! As for Ljubljana, you’ll find a community centre there that was set up in 2013 and is very active, as its director explains on our page dedicated to the city.
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Trani
During the late Middle Ages, the city of Trani was home to a significant minority population of Jews. This community reached a high point during the thirteenth century. The giudecca of Trani was compact in size, diverse in architectural character, and largely open to the city around it, which indicates a specific form of coexistence. At the moment of its greatest physical expansion, we find ...
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San Nicandro
It was in San Nicandro that the first mass conversion to Judaism since the end of antiquity took place. All the converts emigrated to Israel shortly after 1948, so unfortunately there is nothing left in San Nicandro recalling this incredible story.
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Southern Italy
The communities of the southern peninsula were the wealthiest and best integrated in all of Italy during the Middle Ages. This was particularly true of Sicily, where more than 37,000 Jews lived, including a large number in Palermo. This is as many as are living in all of Italy today. The world of the Jews living under the Spanish crown was swept away within a few years after the forced ...
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Ancona
The Jews first arrived in Ancona around 1000 C.E. In the fourteenth century, the city hosted a significant Jewish community, whose activities were organized around the port and commerce with the Orient. In 1541, Pope Paul III encouraged Jews expelled from Naples and, in 1547, even the Marranos from Portugal to settle in Ancona, granting them protection from the Inquisition. A hundred or so ...
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Senigallia
The history of the Jews in Senigallia is similar to that of the Jews of Urbino or Pesaro. In the eighteenth century, the Jews numbered 600 of a total population of approximately 5,500 inhabitants. When French troops withdrew, the populace sacked the ghetto, killing thirteen Jews and forcing the others to flee to Ancona. In 1801, Pope Pius VII forced the Jews to return and rebuild their ...
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Urbino
The first traces of a Jewish presence in Urbino date to the fourteenth century, when Daniel of Viterbo received authorization to work as a banker and merchant. The Jewish community prospered under the liberal regime of Duke Federigo da Montrefeltro (1444-82), who was interested in Jewish culture and collected Hebrew manuscripts. This situation changed when the duchy came over the authority of ...
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Pesaro
Documents attest to a Jewish presence in Pesaro dating back to 1214. The expulsion of the Jews from the papal states in 1569 led numerous Jewish families to Pesaro, which became the most important center of Jewish life in the Duchy of Urbino. The annexation of the Duchy by the Pope radically changed the Jews’ situation. Three years later, in 1634, 500 Jews were forced to move into a ...
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The Marches
The presence of Jews in the Marches dates from as early as the twelfth century. The community developed especially after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, Sicily, and the Kingdom of Naples. There are still remains of Jewish streets and synagogues in a number of small towns in this region bordering the Adriatic coast. This area is off the beaten tourist path and very picturesque. The Jews were ...
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Trieste
A rich and influential Jewish community lived in Trieste, a large port city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that became Italian only after the First World War. During the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, this community had a profound impact of the economic and cultural life of the city. Enclosed in the ghetto in 1696, the Jews enjoyed a de facto emancipation ...
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Conegliano Veneto
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.
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Padua
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 ...
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Veneto
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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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, 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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Soncino
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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Milan
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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Lombardy
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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Casale 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 gilding wood decorations and frescoes is one of the most remarkable in Italy. After ...
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Asti
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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Mondovi
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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Cherasco
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
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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Carmagnola
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
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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Piedmont
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
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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