“But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn…”
–William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 1.1.3-5
*
It was a chilly January afternoon when I first reached the Ghetto. I arrived far later than I had intended, having spent much of the day elsewhere and losing track of time. Evening was closing in. The campo looked almost deserted. The shutters were closed, and aside from the soft splash of water in the wells, there was scarcely any sound. There were no streetlights; scarcely even a hint of a lamplight. Yet among the branches, thousands of tiny lights glowed.
With nothing else to do, I wandered aimlessly across the square. Across from me, a bronze plaque dominated the wall. It was difficult to discern in the dim light. Squinting, I could barely make out a scene of a train pulling wagons, hundreds of people, and behind them soldiers with rifles. I drew in a breath of the cold air. Behind the plaque, in a large, irregular recess framed by a metal grille, lay an inscription bearing names. Not far away, another plaque bore a date. I read the numbers slowly. 5 December 1943. I paused. 5 December. It happened to be my birthday.
Just then, a sound reached my right ear—a gentle, singing tune, bright and defiant. I turned and saw a light in a ground-floor window and a small group of men dressed in black, shawls wrapped and heads bowed in prayer. In that moment it dawned on me: it was Friday. The Sabbath was beginning. A sharp ache stabbed at my chest, and, for reasons I could not name, I began to cry.
Most of all, the Ghetto’s story is a testament of hope. Despite all they endured, its inhabitants not merely survived but thrived.
From that instant, my curiosity about the Venetian Ghetto took root. Although I did not yet grasp it fully, I had felt—the essence of its history already speaking to me. For many, the word ‘ghetto’ evokes familiar echoes: the Warsaw and Łódź ghettos, the grim episodes that followed, or the “imprisoned cities” of Black Americans across Harlem and Chicago, Brownsville and Detroit. We have seen it reimagined in poems and songs. Yet it was there, tucked away in Cannaregio, that the term—and its troubled history—was born.
*
In many respects, the Venetian Ghetto was not an invention so much as a continuation of a broader pattern. It was far from the first instance of Jews being confined to a designated quarter that was obligatory, separate, and enclosed. By the time the Ghetto was established on March 29, 1516, the policy of enforced segregation had already become a troubling routine across Europe. From at least the thirteenth century onward, Jewish communities in Prague, Frankfurt-am-Main, Marseilles, and more than a dozen other places were compelled to inhabit defined districts, walled off from the surrounding city by gates and barriers.
Yet the Venetian Ghetto was not simply a culmination of earlier trends. There was no deliberate plan to imitate other Jewish quarters, no awareness of a past to guide its future, and no fixed expectation of how long it would endure beyond a few years. Instead, it emerged spontaneously, shaped by the turbulence of the Italian Wars and Venice’s own pragmatic urge to balance religious prejudice with the city’s pressing economic needs.
Like many European polities, Venice long regarded Jews as a threat to the Christian identity of the city. Preachers and patricians warned that, if unrestricted in the population, Jews would corrupt the faith, poison the minds of the faithful, and divert souls from salvation. Yet the state also understood that it could not function effectively without a Jewish presence. By the early sixteenth century, the Republic’s economy was sagging. The “working poor” were especially vulnerable, but because Venetians were unwilling or unable to extend credit of their own, they depended on Jewish moneylenders to keep the economy moving. The Ghetto thus became a practical channel to preserve Jewish lending while minimizing the intended spiritual hazards.
Initially designed as a temporary measure, the Ghetto’s permanence became undeniable after Venice’s maritime commerce collapsed. Jewish merchants—origins in Spain and Portugal—were invited to settle there to help resuscitate Venice’s trade with the Levant. One Ghetto quickly became three, and as Venice’s fortunes declined, these quartered communities became a lasting fixture—so much so that, by the mid-seventeenth century, their existence had become nearly a barometer of the city’s deteriorating condition.
Although the three neighborhoods of the Ghetto Nuovo, Ghetto Vecchio, and Ghetto Nuovissimo retained their own unique ambiance for a surprisingly long time, life within them was cramped, unsanitary, and marked by deprivation. Residents faced an array of petty restraints and, more persistently, an underlying hostility that could flare into violence. Though drawing direct parallels with Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is debatable, the abuse and threats described in the play echo real-life experiences that could feel all too familiar in earlier years. Blood-libels resurfaced from time to time; bodies were sometimes mishandled on the way to burial; and there was even a case of a father watching his son being stabbed in the street.
Over centuries, the Ghetto grew to symbolize the forced segregation of Jewish communities. After the gates finally came down, the place did not vanish from memory; it persisted as a concept as much as a site. Jews, though freed from certain financial obligations and formally recognized as citizens, often remained haunted by the Ghetto’s shadow. Venetian antisemitism, once framed in religious terms, took on a harsher, racial complexion.
Yet the Ghetto’s history is far from straightforward. At times its walls served to shield the Jewish inhabitants from inquisitorial scrutiny, especially after Venice severed ties with the papacy in the early seventeenth century, and the government went to considerable lengths to protect judaizers. In other moments, the walls admitted a surprising openness: the Ghetto was meant to be a hub of exchange between Jews and Christians and a doorway to the East. Jews frequently lived outside its bounds, and Christians sometimes resided within. Conversion and apostasy occurred, and the presence of Marranos—Jews from Spain or Portugal who had converted to Christianity—blurred the boundaries between faiths. Even at the height of segregation, Jews and Christians could cooperate, Christians could arbitrate disputes, and Jewish residents could be found in Christian households. After segregation ended, Jews found themselves occupying civic offices, running restaurants that drew diners from both sides, and serving as soldiers in the broader struggles for Italian unity and, later, national independence.
The longer I have studied this most remarkable place…the more clearly I have come to see its essential truth: that its greatest monument is its endurance; its greatest blessing, its memory; and its greatest hope, its people.
Most importantly, the Ghetto’s history stands as a beacon of hope. Despite the many ordeals endured by its residents, they did not merely endure; they flourished. In a sense, they mirrored the wider Jewish world. Evacuating persecution across foreign lands, its earliest inhabitants represented three national groups, worshipped according to two rites—Ashkenazi and Sephardic—and spoke a multitude of languages. They embarked on a astonishingly diverse array of professions: physicians and peddlers, merchants and editors. They helped stabilize Venice’s economy, founded eight opulent synagogues, established countless charitable institutions, and managed their own communal affairs with democratic processes. They contributed to literature, science, music, and philosophy; they staged plays and festivals; and they transformed Venice into the premier center for Hebrew printing anywhere. And nearly five centuries after the Ghetto’s establishment—long after the catastrophe of the Holocaust—I encountered its people still there on that frigid winter’s evening, steadfast, defiant, and full of hope.
*
In revisiting the Ghetto’s past, I have approached the study through three guiding perspectives. The first is contextual. Clearly, the Ghetto belongs to a broader Jewish diaspora: those who arrived as refugees or migrants from Germany, Spain, Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, and perhaps beyond; and its story cannot be told apart from the fortunes of Venice itself. Just as the Ghetto’s creation followed the heavy losses Venice suffered during the Italian Wars, its later history was shaped by the decline of Venetian shipping, strained relations with the Ottoman Empire and the papacy, its pivot toward the countryside, and its eventual subjugation to France, Austria, and ultimately Italy. I have attempted to link the day-to-day events in Cannaregio to these larger currents as clearly as possible, even if that sometimes required delving into the complexities of the city’s economic life, public finances, and, most critically, the workings of credit markets—avoiding unnecessary technicalities whenever feasible.
The second guiding lens is the environment. Although the Ghetto’s narrative spans grand themes—negotiations, charters, wars, and fiscal policy—the Ghetto itself was a tangible, lived space. Amid the storms of politics and finance, the few square blocks defined how people lived their days: where they slept, what they ate, how they prayed, and how they mourned. I have tried to convey, with as much clarity as possible, the built environment’s evolution—the state of tenements, shops, synagogues, wells, drains, and bridges. I have benefited from a wealth of archival material and from excellent recent scholarship, especially the work of Donatella Calabi, Ennio Concina, and Ugo Camerino, not to mention the preservation efforts that have safeguarded so many of the Ghetto’s structures for future study.
The third lens centers on people. Although this history stretches over roughly seven hundred years, it is, at heart, a narrative about individuals. The Ghetto was a place to live, and while larger forces often dictated its fate, it remained a vibrant community of families, friends, acquaintances, and rivals. I have sought to tell the Ghetto’s story through the lives and voices of its residents. Earlier eras pose a particular challenge due to a scarcity of firsthand accounts, which has sometimes meant relying more on non-Jewish sources. From the mid-sixteenth century onward, however, a rich corpus of material allows us to reconstruct many lives with impressive detail. Among those highlighted are the poet Sara Copia Sullam, the scholar rabbi Leon Modena, the revolutionary Daniele Manin, and the physician Giuseppe Jona. I also aim to balance these notable figures with the experiences of ordinary people—like Simcà Todesca, the housewife who discovered a baby on her doorstep, and the children separated from their families during the Second World War.
This work cannot pretend to exhaustiveness. Historians are cursed to view the past through a foggy lens, and even with careful research, we glimpse only fragments of the Ghetto’s long history. Yet the more deeply I have studied this extraordinary place, the more convinced I have become of a fundamental truth: its enduring legacy is the principal monument; its memory, the principal blessing; and its people, the principal hope.
_______________________________
From The First Ghetto: Venice and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism by Alexander Lee. Copyright © 2026. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group. The First Ghetto has been shortlisted for the 2026 Cundill History Prize.
