Theme Week Venice – The Gheto di Venezia

10 January 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  11 minutes

Campo de Gheto Novo © Didier Descouens/cc-by-sa-4.0

Campo de Gheto Novo © Didier Descouens/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Venetian Ghetto was the area of Venice in which Jews were compelled to live by the government of the Venetian Republic. The English word ghetto is derived from the Jewish ghetto in Venice. The Venetian Ghetto was instituted on 29 March 1516 and is the oldest Jewish ghetto in the world. It was not the first time that Jews in Venice were compelled to live in a segregated area of the city. In 1797 the French army of Italy, commanded by the 28-year-old General Napoleon Bonaparte, conquered Venice, dissolved the Venetian republic, and ended the ghetto’s separation from the city. In the 19th century, the ghetto was renamed the Contrada dell’unione. The Ghetto is an area of the Cannaregio sestiere of Venice, divided into the Ghetto Nuovo (“New Ghetto”), and the adjacent Ghetto Vecchio (“Old Ghetto”). These names of the ghetto sections are misleading, as they refer to an older and newer site at the time of their use by the foundries: in terms of Jewish residence, the Ghetto Nuovo is actually older than the Ghetto Vecchio.   read more…

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