2,000 years, without a break

The Jewish community of Rome is the oldest in Europe and the oldest continuous Jewish community anywhere outside the Land of Israel. Its beginnings are diplomatic rather than tragic: an embassy sent by Judah Maccabee to the Roman Senate in 161 BCE, followed by traders and envoys who settled in Trastevere.

The community grew dramatically after 70 CE, when Titus destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem and brought thousands of Judean captives to Rome as slaves. Their arrival is carved into the city itself – most famously on the Arch of Titus, where the menorah of the Temple is shown being carried through the streets in triumph.

What follows is fifteen centuries of coexistence and constraint: papal protection alternating with papal restriction, a forced sermon every Sabbath, a ban on all trades but rag-dealing and moneylending. In 1555 Pope Paul IV issued the bull Cum nimis absurdum and walled the community into a flood-prone bend of the Tiber. The Roman Ghetto would stand for 315 years – the longest-lasting ghetto in Western Europe – until the gates came down in 1870.

On 16 October 1943, in a single morning, 1,024 Roman Jews were rounded up from the former ghetto and deported to Auschwitz. Sixteen came back. The brass Stolpersteine set into the pavement outside their houses are, for many visitors, the most affecting thing in the quarter.

Today around 15,000 Jews live in Rome, and the old quarter is once again the centre of the city’s Jewish life.

What to see in Jewish Rome

The former Ghetto. A dense grid of streets around via del Portico d’Ottavia, still the heart of the community. The Portico of Octavia itself, the fish market that operated under it, the Turtle Fountain in Piazza Mattei, and the Stolpersteine underfoot.

The Great Synagogue (Tempio Maggiore). Built in 1904 on the site of the demolished ghetto, deliberately monumental and topped by the only square dome on the Roman skyline – so that it could never be mistaken for a church. Its Assyro-Babylonian style was a conscious break with the architecture of the city around it.

The Jewish Museum of Rome. Beneath the Synagogue, seven rooms holding textiles, silver, marble fragments from the ghetto’s five synagogues, and one of the most important collections of ketubot in the world.

The Spanish Synagogue. The small Sephardi temple on the lower floor, still in use, preserving the Spanish rite brought by Jews expelled from Spain and Sicily.

The Arch of Titus. At the edge of the Roman Forum. For centuries Roman Jews would not walk beneath it.

The Jewish catacombs of Vigna Randanini. On the Appian Way, one of only two Jewish catacombs in Rome open to visitors, in use from the 2nd century CE – proof that the community was already large and organised in the imperial period.

Ostia Antica. Twenty-five kilometres from the city, the ruins of what is very probably the oldest synagogue in Europe, in use from the 1st century CE.

Roman Jewish food

Roman Jewish cooking – cucina giudaico-romanesca – is one of Italy’s genuinely distinct regional cuisines, born of poverty and ingenuity inside the ghetto walls. Carciofi alla giudia, the whole artichoke pressed flat and twice-fried until the leaves crackle, is its emblem. Alongside it: fried salt cod fillets, concia of marinated courgettes, aliciotti con l’indivia, and the dense ricotta and sour cherry tart.

Several certified kosher restaurants and bakeries operate on and around via del Portico d’Ottavia, which makes the quarter unusually easy for kosher travellers – you can eat well without leaving a three-street radius.

Practical notes

The Synagogue and Museum are closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays. Entry is through airport-style security, and a single ticket covers the Museum, the Great Synagogue and the Spanish Synagogue. Shoulders and legs down to the knees must be covered; the Synagogue provides kippot but no other coverings.

The Great Synagogue can only be entered with a guide, and guides working inside must be approved by the Jewish Community of Rome. The catacombs of Vigna Randanini are on private land and require arrangement in advance – they cannot be visited independently.

Allow three hours for the ghetto, Museum and Synagogues together. Ostia and the catacombs are each a half day.