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Jewish treasures, monuments and books in Italy.
April 1, 2017
Spoleto was a Roman colony – later occupied by the Goths, then taken by the Lombards – was elected the capital of the duchy. In 1324 Spoleto was conquered by Perugia, then passed under the dominion of the Church. In 1298, an ancient and prestigious Roman Jewish family, the de Pomis, settled in Spoleto. In […]
April 1, 2017
The Perugian statute of 1279, decreeing the expulsion of the Jews from the town, is proof that a Jewish settlement had previously been in existence in Perugia. It seems, however, that this measure was never put into effect and in succeeding years there was an active Jewish group in Perugia, mostly engaged in moneylending. The […]
March 21, 2017
Streets downtown Ancona Via Astagno, Ghetto of Ancona Instituted in 1555, the Ghetto of Ancona was located in the area circumscribed by today’s Via Podesti, via Astagno and via Cialdini. From the Citadel’s bastions, to the hill […]
March 20, 2017
Camerino was one of eleven towns between Ancona and Rome where Jewish merchants were known to be active in trade. The town, and its Jewish community, began a rapid decline in 1545, with the incorporation of Camerino into the Papal States. At that time, the Jews were forced to move into the area between what […]
March 20, 2017
A conception of Jewish separation, even isolation, has been central to the study of late-medieval and early-Renaissance cities in Italy — particularly after the sixteenth century, when the prototype of the ghetto was invented in Venice. However, the giudecca of Trani was compact in size and diverse in architectural character and largely open to the […]
March 20, 2017
Historical Archive of the Jewish Community of Senigallia are located at the Centro Bibliografico of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities in Rome. (Read Article)
March 20, 2017
The history of the Jewish Community of Merano, dates back to the first half of the eighteenth century. At that time, the whole region of Tyrol belonged to Austria, and the Jewish Community of Hohenems, in the Austrian region of Vorarlberg, close to the border with Switzerland, had jurisdiction over the Jews living in both […]
March 20, 2017
Pisa may be the first city in the Tuscan region in which the Jews settled. A contract was given in 850 that registered a Jewish home-owner. By 1165, Benjamin of Tudela, on his trip from Spain to Jerusalem, discovered a Jewish community of 20 families living in Pisa. In the 13th century, the “Alley of the Jews” (Chiasso di […]
March 20, 2017
Jews settled in Florence before 1400. They were not needed in this flourishing commercial city – the scene of factional strife between the Guelfs and Ghibellines – as there was an abundance of capital, the Florentines being the greatest speculators and the most rapacious usurers of the Middle Ages. But having admitted the Jews, the Florentines […]
March 20, 2017
A group of Jews probably settled in this ancient and flourishing Roman colony long before the third century C.E.; the date of the earliest Jewish inscriptions discovered at the site. Fifty-four epitaphs originating from a Jewish catacomb have been brought to light; they date from the third to sixth centuries and are composed in Greek or […]
March 20, 2017
An attractive island in the Mediterranean, Sicily has been a hub of migration routes for millennia. Jews are thought to have been part of the patchwork at least as early as the 1st century, after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. At the end of the 15th […]
March 20, 2017
The first written mention of a Jewish presence in Trieste is in the 14th century. After this tiny village came under Austrian protection in 1382, German Jews settled there, engaging in moneylending, banking and trade. In 1697, Trieste’s 60 Jews were forced to live in a ghetto. To create a mercantile empire, the Hapsburg rulers […]
March 20, 2017
In 1516, Venice’s ruling council confined all the Jews in a small area not far from today’s train station, where there had been getti, or foundries. The gates were locked at night, and restrictions were placed on Jewish economic activities. Jews were only allowed to operate pawn shops and lend money, trade in textiles, and […]
March 20, 2017
Situated near the mouth of the River Tiber, Ostia was one of the harbors of Rome and became at the end of the Republic an important commercial center. However, Ostia flourished mainly under the Flavian and Antonine Dynasties. From the middle of the 3rd century C.E., its slow decline began. At the end of the 19th century, […]
March 20, 2017
The Jewish Community of Rome is probably the oldest in the world, with a continuous existence from classical times down to the present day. The first record of Jews in Rome is in 161 BCE, when Jason b. Elazar and Eupolemus b. Johanan are said to have gone there as envoys from Judah Maccabee. The […]
March 20, 2017
Sabbioneta is located on the left bank of the Po river. In the 16th century, an important center of culture thanks to the effort of Vespasiano Gonzaga. In 1427, Sabbioneta was annexed to Mantua by the Marquis Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, and, in 1444, was assigned it to his son Carlo. ” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″] Vespasiano […]
March 20, 2017
The first mention of Jews in Mantua dates from the 12th century, when Abraham ibn Ezra finished his grammatical work “Zahot”(1145) there. Apparently, he was in the city again in 1153. There are no further references to Jews in connection with Mantua until they are mentioned in the new statutes of the city at the […]
March 20, 2017
While the Jews of Alghero were mostly engaged in trade, there were also many scholars and physicians among them. The best known were: Isaac Eymies (who was pensioned by the governor of Lugodoro and by the city of Alghero, and who was called in 1406 to the post of city physician of Cagliari); Ḥayyim of Hipre […]
March 20, 2017
Walking along Vico del Campo, a narrow road deep within this tangled ancient town, it is not unlikely to find odd, empty hollows on the facades of some sixteenth century buildings. We are in the heart of the ancient Jewish ‘ghetto’ of the ‘Lanterna’ (the old lighthouse symbol of the city). ” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” […]
March 20, 2017
The Jewish presence in Bologna dates back to 1353, when the Jewish banker Gaius Finzi traveled from Rome and took up his residence in the quartier of Porta Procola. In the second half of the 14th century, around 15 Jewish families settled in the city. In 1416, at the time of the papal election, a vigilance committee of […]
March 20, 2017
Ferrara is home to an ancient and renowned Jewish community. An inscription dating from Roman times and a document dated to 1088 may relate to local Jewish life. Privileges enjoyed by Jews were recorded in 1275. In the same century, two tosafists, both named R. Moses b. Meir, lived in Ferrara, and perhaps also the […]
March 20, 2017
The first document relating to Jews in Modena may date back to 1025, but the existence of a stable Jewish community, formed by loan-bankers who originated from Perugia, Rimini, and Fermo, was not recorded until 1393. For many years, the Jews of Modena enjoyed the protection of the house of Este, which ruled Modena as […]
March 20, 2017
Parma is an Italian city, formerly capital of the duchy of the same name; the seat of an ancient Jewish community. When the plague devastated Italy in 1348, many of the Jews of Parma fell victim to the fury of the populace, which regarded them as the cause of the pestilence. In the fifteenth century, […]
March 20, 2017
The first traces of a Jewish presence in Soragna date back to 1543, when the papal chamberlain granted Giuseppe Colombo di Giacobbe, from Jena, permission to open a lending bank. In 1547, the notary records of the local feudal lord registered a debt with Jsepe hebreo banker in Soragna, which resulted pay interest of 18%. […]
March 20, 2017
In 1446, the commune granted Abramo della Vigneria and his son Angelo a concession to establish a loan-bank in Vercelli with the condition that they be prepared to lend the commune up to 100 florins on request. A small Jewish community formed around these bankers, regulated by the severe statutes issued in 1430 by Amadeus […]
March 20, 2017
Turin was the capital of the duchy of Savoy and later of the kingdom of Sardinia; it is now the capital of Piedmont province. The presence of Jews in Turin was recorded by Bishop Maximus in the fourth century, but thereafter no evidence of Jews exists until 1424, when the French Jewish physicians and bankers, […]
March 20, 2017
From 1142 until the end of the sixteenth century, Salluzzo was the capital of the independent domain of the Marquis of Saluzzo. Contended for by France and Savoy in 1548, the king of France, Henry II, took the city under his rule and, in 1588, the Duke of Savoy Carlo Emanuele I occupied it. The […]
March 20, 2017
Jews first settled in Mondovi in 1580, after expulsions from Spain and southern France. Jewish moneylenders were vital to the local economy. Because of this, the Savoy did not establish a ghetto in Mondovì until 1720. After the Edict of Emancipation on April 2, 1848, Fortuna Estella Levi organized Jewish and Catholic women jointly to […]
March 20, 2017
The first Jewish settlers in Moncalvo presumably arrived after the expulsions from France, as it was one of only three communities following the *Apam (= Asti, *Fossano, Moncalvo) liturgy, which was of French origin. The first documents attesting to the presence of Jews in Moncalvo date only from the 1570s. When Moncalvo passed to the […]
March 20, 2017
An undocumented source dates the arrival of Jews in Cuneo to the end of the 14th century. A document dated 1436 attests to the fact that the Council of Cuneo tried to expel the Jews at the request of local citizens. They had argued that, on given market days, Jews caused the rise of the price of wheat. It was therefore forbidden for Jews […]
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