Cum nimis absurdum

On 14 July 1555, two months after his election, Pope Paul IV issued the bull Cum nimis absurdum. Within days the Jews of Rome – who had lived in the city for more than sixteen centuries – were ordered into a walled enclosure on a bend of the Tiber that flooded almost every winter.

The rules were precise. Three gates, locked at sunset and opened at dawn. One synagogue permitted, which the community circumvented by building five under a single roof, the Cinque Scole. Jews could deal in rags and lend money, and nothing else. A yellow hat for men, a yellow shawl for women. Attendance was compulsory at a Christian sermon each Sabbath.

The enclosure covered barely three hectares and at its most crowded held over 4,000 people. It stood for 315 years – through the French occupation, a brief abolition, and a restoration under Pope Leo XII – until Rome fell to the Kingdom of Italy in 1870 and the gates came down for good. The walls were demolished in 1888, and most of the old quarter with them.

16 October 1943

At 5.30 in the morning on 16 October 1943, German forces sealed the streets of the former ghetto and went house to house. 1,024 Roman Jews were taken, more than two hundred of them children. They were held for two days in the Collegio Militare, a few hundred metres away, then put on a train to Auschwitz.

Sixteen survived. None of the children.

The brass Stolpersteine set into the cobbles outside individual doorways carry the name, birth year, date of deportation and fate of each person taken from that building. There are hundreds of them in these few streets. They are easy to walk over without noticing, which is the point of them.

What to see today

Via del Portico d’Ottavia is the spine of the quarter, and the one street where original ghetto-era buildings survive – look for the stacked, irregular upper floors, added upward because the community was forbidden to build outward.

The Portico of Octavia, a 2nd-century BCE Roman structure at the end of the street, under which the ghetto’s fish market operated for centuries. An inscription still records that any fish longer than the marble slab had to have its head surrendered to the city magistrates.

The Great Synagogue, built in 1904 after the demolition of the Cinque Scole, with the only square dome in Rome – designed so that it could not be confused with a church.

The Jewish Museum of Rome, in the Synagogue’s lower level, holding marble fragments rescued from the five destroyed synagogues, textiles, silver and a major collection of ketubot.

The Spanish Synagogue, small and still in use, preserving the Sephardi rite of the Jews expelled from Spain and Sicily.

Piazza Mattei and the Turtle Fountain, just outside the old walls.

The Tiber Island and the ruins of the Theatre of Marcellus at the quarter’s edge.

Eating in the ghetto

The quarter is the birthplace of cucina giudaico-romanesca, and the reason many visitors come. Carciofi alla giudia – the artichoke opened out and twice-fried until it holds its shape like a flower – is the dish everyone knows. Beyond it: filetti di baccalà, concia di zucchine, aliciotti con l’indivia, and the ricotta and sour cherry tart from the bakery on the corner.

Several certified kosher restaurants and bakeries operate within the same few streets, which makes this one of the easiest quarters in Europe for a kosher traveller.

Visiting

The Museum and Synagogues are closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays. One ticket covers the Jewish Museum, the Great Synagogue and the Spanish Synagogue, and entry is through security screening.

The Great Synagogue can only be visited with a guide, and guides working inside must be approved by the Jewish Community of Rome. Shoulders and legs down to the knees must be covered; kippot are provided, other coverings are not.

Allow three hours for the quarter, the Museum and both Synagogues together.