Roman Ghetto

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Great Synagogue of Rome (Tempio Maggiore di Roma), built between 1901 and 1904 overlooking the former ghetto.

The Roman Ghetto was located in the rione Sant'Angelo, in the area surrounded by today's Via del Portico d'Ottavia, Lungotevere dei Cenci, Via del Progresso and Via di Santa Maria del Pianto close to the Tiber and the Theater of Marcellus, in Rome, Italy.

Papal bull Cum nimis absurdum, promulgated by Pope Paul IV in 1555 segregated the Jews, who had lived freely in Rome since Antiquity, in a walled quarter with three gates that were locked at night, and subjected them to various restrictions on their personal freedom (like limits to the allowed professions), and degradations like compulsory Catholic sermons on the Jewish shabbat although to a lesser degree than in other European countries. The district lacked a well and flooded every winter.

This "ghetto" had two objects--to protect Christians from too close an association with persons of a different religion, and to protect the Jews from mobs or hooligans. The ghetto was welcome to some Jews because it protected the small community from the drain which must follow from assimilation to the majority and enabled special religious customs to be observed without interference...for three or four decades of the nineteenth century this was not a black mark to the papal government--Vienna, Prague, Venice--and further East, in Russia and Poland, their treatment could be rougher." ^{[#endnote_HISTPOPE]}

When Napoleonic forces occupied Rome, the Ghetto was legally abolished (in 1808), but it was reinstated as soon as the Papacy regained control. In 1848, during the brief revolution, the Ghetto was abolished once more, again temporarily. The Jews had to petition annually for permission to live there, and were disabled from owning any property even in the Ghetto. They paid a yearly tax for the privilege; formality and tax survived until 1850.

Detail from the Arch of Titus showing spoils from the Sack of Jerusalem

They had to swear yearly loyalty to the Pope by the Arch of Titus (it celebrates the Roman sack of Jerusalem).

The requirement that Jews live within the Ghetto was abolished when the last remnant of the Papal States was overthrown on September 20, 1870.

Pope Leo XIII was less intransigent than Pius IX, and the city of Rome was able to tear down the Ghetto's walls in 1888 and demolish it almost completely, before the area was reconstructed around the new Synagogue.

The ghetto of Rome was the last remaining ghetto in Western Europe until its later reintroduction by Nazi Germany.

Now it is "one of the Rome's most charming and eclectic neighborhoods, [...] restaurants serving up some of the best food in the city" ^{[#endnote_LETSGO]}, like the Jewish specialty of fried artichokes.

References

1. ↑ 
2. ↑  Rome: A Let's Go City Guide, Matthew W. Mahan (editor), Macmillan, Cambridge, MA, 2004. ISBN 1-4050-3329-0, page 104.

External links

1. redirect

• [Roman Ghetto described]
• [October 18: Jews of Rome Deported to Auschwitz]
• [Liliana Picciotto Fargion. Il Libro della Memoria. Gli Ebrei deportati dall'Italia (1943-1945). Milan: Mursia, 1991]

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