The story
Welcome to Cannaregio, a corner of Venice where the shadows feel a little longer and the history runs deeper into the soil. As you cross the small bridge leading into the Campo del Ghetto Nuovo, look down at the stone pillars. If you look closely, you can still see the notches where heavy iron gates were once fixed.
In 1516, the Venetian Republic decreed that all Jewish residents must live on this small island, and at night, those gates were locked from the outside, with Christian guards patrolling the canals to ensure no one left before sunrise. Paradoxically, we are standing in the Ghetto Nuovo, which means the New Ghetto, but it is actually the oldest part of the neighborhood. The name doesn’t come from a word for segregation, but from the Venetian word geto, meaning foundry.
Long before this was a residential area, it was a site for casting bronze cannons. When the Jewish community was moved here, the word evolved into the term we use globally today. Take a moment to look up.
Do you notice how the buildings here are much taller than in the rest of Venice? Some reach seven or eight stories high. Because the community was confined to this tiny island and couldn't expand outward, they were forced to build upward.
These were the world’s first skyscrapers, built with low ceilings and thin walls to accommodate a growing population in a locked space. As you walk toward the center of the wide, open square, look for the red storefront of the Banco Rosso. This was one of the original pawnshops of the ghetto.
Legend says this is where the English phrase being in the red originated, referring to the red receipts issued by the Jewish moneylenders. It was a complex relationship; the Republic restricted the professions Jewish people could hold, often limiting them to medicine, textile trading, or money lending, services that the city’s nobility relied upon even as they enforced the ghetto’s walls. If you look at the top floors of the buildings surrounding the square, you might notice rows of five windows or small wooden domes.
These are the synagogues, or Schole. Because Jewish law forbade building grand, freestanding temples at the time, they were hidden in plain sight on the upper floors of ordinary apartments. Inside, however, they are masterpieces of Baroque and Renaissance design, reflecting the diverse backgrounds of the residents—German, Italian, Spanish, and Levantine.
Today, the ghetto is a place of quiet resilience. You’ll see the haunting bronze reliefs of the Holocaust Memorial, a reminder of the community members lost during the 1940s. But you will also hear the voices of children and smell the sweet scent of impade coming from the local bakeries.
The gates are gone, but the spirit of this island within an island remains as one of the most profound chapters of the Venetian story.