The Venetian Ghetto plays a uniquely important role in the history of segregation. By the time it was founded, on 29 March 1516, Jews had already been forced to live in distinct areas elsewhere in Europe; but what made the Venetian Ghetto so unusual was that it established a completely new way of thinking—and talking—about Jewish confinement. Previously, Jewish areas had gone by all sorts of different names (Judenstraße, Juiverie etc). These names tended to relate to a specific location (such as a street or square) or were extremely vague. This meant they couldn’t easily be applied to other Jewish areas elsewhere.
The word ‘ghetto’ was different. It had nothing to do with Jews at all. Originally, it came from the verb gettare, meaning ‘to throw’, or ‘to cast’; and was used as the name of an island in Cannaregio, because that was where the communal copper foundry had thrown its rubbish. When the Venetian government confined the city’s Jews there in the early sixteenth century, the island—now covered in tenement buildings—kept the name; and soon enough, ‘ghetto’ was used to describe not just the place, but the institution of Jewish confinement itself. This proved crucial. Since the word wasn’t linked to a street, or a square, or anything like that, but still conjured up a sense of total isolation—by virtue of the ghetto’s location—it came to connote a very particular type of confinement. As such, it could be easily exported to describe Jewish quarters elsewhere—and eventually adapted to describe sites of confinement or exclusion the world over.
When we think of the Venetian Ghetto, however, one of the first things most of us think of is probably Shylock from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Unfortunately, Shakespeare never actually visited Venice; and scholars now recognise that Shylock’s character is more a reflection of anti-Jewish hysteria in early seventeenth-century London than anything that was going on in Italy at that time. But it is still a useful image for two reasons. On the one hand, Shylock’s mistreatment in the play isn’t a million miles away from how Jews in Venice were treated.
From the beginning, they were subject to strict and often humiliating restrictions–and were frequently the target of violence and discrimination. On the other hand, the fact that Shakespeare chose to make Shylock a resident of Venice is a telling illustration of the Ghetto’s profoundly international character. It was a microcosm of the Jewish world. Eventually consisting of three distinct, but connected, ghettos, it was home to Jewish migrants and refugees from Germany, Spain, Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, modern Ukraine and Russia—and beyond. It retained links with Jewish communities as far afield as Amsterdam and Alexandria; and it came to influence the way Jews were perceived—and thought about themselves—far and wide.
In my book, The First Ghetto: Venice and the Jews, I tried to bring both of these elements to the fore. I wanted to write a truly social history of the place. Using a wealth of contemporary testimonies, I show how the Jews of Venice not merely survived centuries of hardship and oppression, but thrived. I explore the explosion of Hebrew printing, and the proliferation of poetry, music, and thought; and I also try reconstruct the lives of the ordinary people in as much detail as I can—bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of their everyday existence.
But I also realized that the Ghetto’s story could only truly be understood by setting it in a much wider context. I wanted to show how its existence has been shaped by Venice’s own shifting fortunes: how, having been first called into existence by migration and war, its endurance was guaranteed by Venice’s decline; and its legacy twisted by Napoleon’s Italian campaigns, Austrian rule, Italian unification, and the tragedies of the Second World War.
The books I have chosen are intended to reflect these two key facets of the Ghetto’s character. In my own research, I have relied heavily on the wealth of Italian scholarship which has been produced in recent years (such as the indispensable studies by Donatella Calabi, Riccardo Calimani, Ennio Concina, Ugo Fortis, and Renata Segre—to name just a few), but there are some really splendid works in English give a great insight into both the Ghetto’s inner workings and its broader setting. I’ve also picked one novel in French that is really very much worth reading.
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John Julius Norwich, A History of Venice
(Vintage)
Although first published nearly fifty years ago, this is still the best place to start for anyone who wants to get to grips with the Venetian Republic. Superbly written and lovingly researched, it offers a magnificent survey of the Serenissima’s history from its legendary foundation in 421 to its final collapse in 1797. It gives a clear impression of why Venice came to be such a crucial bridge between East and West, how its once unchallenged maritime supremacy collapsed, and how those factors shaped its often fractious politics.
Margaret Plant, Venice: Fragile City 1797-1997
(Yale University Press)
This monumental study continues Venice’s story from the abolition of the Republic to the end of the twentieth century. Unlike Norwich’s book, it is more focussed on the social and cultural dimensions of Venice’s history and as a result, brings to light the issues of Venetian and Italian identity which formed the backdrop to the experiences of its Jewish residents.
Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620
(Harvard University Press)
No list of books about Renaissance Venice (and its relations with Jews) would be complete without Brian Pullan’s classic study. It explores how the Republic of Venice handled the problem of poor relief in a period of profound political, social, and economic upheaval—and how the Republic veered between relying on Jewish moneylenders to meet the needs of the ‘working poor,’ and establishing charitable lending banks (known as monti di pieta) in its subject cities to make Jewish lending less necessary.
Robert C. Davis and Benjamin Ravid, ed., The Jews of Early Modern Venice
(Hopkins University Press)
This excellent volume contains a series of concise and authoritative essays on key aspects of the Ghetto’s early history, written by leading experts in the field. There are some particularly valuable contributions on the role played by Jews in international trade (and the foundation of the second and third ghettos to accommodate Jewish merchants, originally from Spain and Portugal); on the persecution of Jewish apostates from Catholicism by the Inquisition; and on Jewish women and family life. It’s great for dipping into, too.
Mark R. Cohen, trans. and ed., The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi. Leon Modena’s Life of Judah
(Princeton University Press)
Leon Modena was (1571-1648) was one of the Ghetto’s leading figures during the early seventeenth century. He was a man of many talents. As well as being a prominent rabbi, he also tried his hand at over twenty other professions, too—from matchmaker and translator, to amulet-seller and music teacher. Above all, he was a literary colossus—churning out dozens of works during a long and fruitful career. His autobiography is unquestionably one of the most vivid and engaging portraits of everyday life in the Ghetto at its peak—and this is a brilliant edition. We see up close his fractious relationship with his wife; the overpowering grief he felt when his son, Zebulun, was killed in the street—and his continual anxiety over the state of relations between the Ghetto and the government of Venice.
Simon Levis Sullam, The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy
(Princeton University Press)
A professor at Ca’ Focari, University of Venice, Simon Levis Sullam has written extensively about the history of the Jews of Venice in the interwar period. In this remarkable book, he offers a strikingly revisionist account of Italy’s role in the Holocaust. Challenging the myth that the Holocaust was ‘imposed’ on Italy by Germany, he lays bare the extent to which Italians willingly facilitated the deportation and extermination of Jews in the period 1943 and 1945, when the Mussolini’s puppet Italian Social Republic was occupied by Nazi Germany. Some of the book’s most harrowing parts deal with the deportation of the Segre family from Venice. It is a gripping, revelatory read.
Jean d’Ormesson, Histoire du Juif errant
(FOLIO)
One of France’s most eminent men of letters, Jean d’Ormesson is on excellent form in this ambitious historical novel. The book follows the story of Simon, the ‘wandering Jew’ down the centuries. But what makes it so interesting is that it is also set in Venice. This isn’t an accident. As d’Ormesson makes clear, nowhere else does the Jewish past and Jewish present blur together as seamlessly as in Simon’s own character—and as such, the novel is an engaging testimony to the continuities of the Ghetto’s history, and to the long shadow it casts.
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Alexander Lee’s The First Ghetto: Venice and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism, a finalist for the 2026 Cundill History Prize, is available now.