The Jewish Ghetto of Venice

In 1516 the Venetian Republic ordered the city's Jews to live on a small island in Cannaregio that had once held a copper foundry — a getto in Venetian — and the word ghetto entered every language. The area was enclosed by gates locked at night and guarded by Christian watchmen paid for by the community, and its residents were subject to strict rules on work and dress. Yet the Ghetto also became a remarkable centre of Jewish life and learning, home to Jews of Italian, German, Levantine and Spanish and Portuguese origin, each with its own synagogue, or scola. Because the area could not expand outward, its buildings grew upward, and the houses around the Campo del Ghetto Nuovo are among the tallest in Venice, seven or eight storeys high with low ceilings. Five historic synagogues survive, their modest exteriors hiding richly decorated prayer halls on the upper floors: the Scola Tedesca, Scola Canton and Scola Italiana in the Ghetto Nuovo, and the larger Scola Levantina and Scola Spagnola in the Ghetto Vecchio, which remain active places of worship. In the campo, bronze reliefs by Arbit Blatas and a memorial wall commemorate the Venetian Jews deported during the Holocaust. The Jewish Museum of Venice, closed for a major renovation since 2019, reopened on 22 October 2026, considerably enlarged, with new galleries, a reconstructed traditional Jewish home, a children's area and a route that links the restored synagogues of the Ghetto Nuovo. Today a Jewish community still lives and worships here, with kosher bakeries and a yeshiva, and the neighbourhood is one of the most peaceful in Venice.

How to visit: the campo and lanes of the Ghetto are free to explore at any time and make a quiet walk from the station or the Fondamenta della Misericordia. To enter the synagogues you must join a guided tour, which leaves from the museum at set times in several languages; the synagogues are not visited on the Sabbath and on Jewish holidays, when the museum also closes, so check the calendar before planning. Tiqets sells museum and synagogue entry with an audio guide and an app-based self-guided tour of the Ghetto. Dress respectfully, and men may be asked to cover their heads in the synagogues.

What is new: the renovated museum expands the old galleries considerably, with improved access, new temporary exhibition spaces, a bookshop, a library and archive for scholars, multimedia installations aimed at all ages, and a recreated Jewish home in a sixteenth-century apartment. Three synagogues of the Ghetto Nuovo, the Tedesca, the Italiana and the Canton, have been restored and are now part of the museum route, connected with the Levantine and Spanish synagogues of the Ghetto Vecchio. Because the museum has only just reopened, opening days and tour times may shift during its first months, so check before going.

Beyond the Ghetto: Cannaregio is the most lived-in of the historic districts, and the canals to the north, the Fondamenta della Misericordia and Fondamenta degli Ormesini, are lined with bacari and inexpensive restaurants where Venetians actually eat. Nearby are the churches of the Madonna dell'Orto, Tintoretto's parish church where he is buried, and Sant'Alvise. From the Fondamente Nove waterfront, boats leave for Murano, Burano and the cemetery island of San Michele. An afternoon in the Ghetto and Cannaregio, ending with cicchetti on the canal, is a perfect counterweight to a day at San Marco. A detail that confuses many visitors: the Ghetto Nuovo, the New Ghetto with the large campo, is actually the oldest part, settled in 1516. The names refer to the new and old foundries that stood there, not to the order of settlement, and the Ghetto Vecchio was added in 1541, followed by a small Ghetto Nuovissimo in 1633. Walk all three to understand how the community grew within its walls, and look for the marks of the old gates in the stone at the entrances.