Rome · Florence · Venice · Naples
Two thousand years, four cities, one unbroken story
Italy holds the oldest Jewish community in the Western world. Jews were living in Rome before the Colosseum was built, before the Temple in Jerusalem fell, before Christianity existed as a religion — and they never left. No other community in Europe can say that.
Italy also gave the world the word ghetto, in Venice in 1516. And it preserved the Italian rite, a liturgy that survives in no other country on earth.
Four cities carry most of that story. Here is what is in each one, and what it takes to see it properly.
Jewish Rome
Two thousand years without interruption — the longest continuous Jewish presence anywhere in the West.
The community arrived as free citizens in the second century BCE and grew, brutally, in 70 CE with the slaves Titus brought back from Judea. It was walled into a ghetto in 1555 by the bull Cum nimis absurdum and stayed there for 315 years, until 1870. The Great Synagogue rose on the cleared ground in 1904, and it still follows the Italian rite.
Most of the ghetto itself is gone — demolished when the Tiber embankments went up. What survives is the street plan, the Museum, the synagogues, and a great deal underground.
- Ghetto, Jewish Museum and both Synagogues
- Colosseum, Roman Forum and the Arch of Titus
- Jewish catacombs of Vigna Randanini
- Ostia Antica and Europe’s oldest synagogue
- Vatican Museums from a Jewish perspective
- Shabbat walking tour
- Kosher cooking class, ghetto recipes
- For children: hidden animals and symbols
- Judaism, Christianity and the mystery cults
Jewish Florence
A synagogue most visitors never find, and a ghetto that no longer exists.
Florence has had a Jewish presence since at least the twelfth century and was one of Italy’s great centres of Talmudic study. The community’s fortunes ran straight through the Medici — protected by some, confined by others. Cosimo I created the ghetto in 1571.
It was demolished in the 1880s, when Florence was briefly the capital of Italy and the centre was rebuilt: Piazza della Repubblica stands where the ghetto was. The Great Synagogue, Moorish revival with a green copper dome, was built between 1874 and 1882 — precisely because emancipation had arrived and the community wanted to be seen.
- Jewish Florence: Synagogue, Museum and former ghetto
- Renaissance walking tour: Duomo, Signoria, Ponte Vecchio
- Uffizi Gallery, private, first slot of the day
- Luxury Florence: Gucci, fashion and the artisans
- For children: the walk and a marbled paper workshop
- For children: the walk and a leather workshop
From Rome it is an hour and a half by high-speed train, so it works comfortably as a day trip.
Jewish Venice
The place that gave the world the word, on 29 March 1516.
The Venetian Senate ordered the city’s Jews onto a single small island where a copper foundry had stood — geto, in Venetian. Every ghetto since takes its name from that patch of ground.
It is the one Italian ghetto still physically standing, and the constraint is written into the architecture: unable to grow outwards, the community built upwards. The buildings around Campo di Ghetto Nuovo are the tallest residential blocks in Venice, with the five synagogues hidden on the top floors, above the apartments. Venice was also the capital of Hebrew printing — the first complete printed Talmud came off a Venetian press.
About 450 Jews live in Venice today, a handful of them in the ghetto itself.
Jewish Naples
The only community in southern Italy that came back.
In the early sixteenth century Naples had three Giudecche — one for Sicilian Jews, one for Spanish, and a larger one for the native community. In 1541 every Jew was expelled from the Kingdom of Naples, and the Jewish south effectively ended.
They were readmitted in 1735. The community re-formed properly only after Italian unification: a synagogue opened in Via Cappella Vecchia in 1864, backed by the Rothschilds, who had a banking office in the city. Today it numbers around 200 people. Nobody puts Naples on an Italian itinerary, and that is exactly the reason to.
A jar found at Pompeii is labelled garum castum — fish sauce prepared to Jewish dietary rules. Somebody down there was keeping kosher in 79 CE.
Planning a Jewish trip to Italy
The four questions every family asks before anything is booked. If you would rather see the whole trip than the cities one at a time, start from Jewish heritage tours of Italy: how many days each city needs, and how they fit together around Shabbat.
How many days
Rome needs three full days to cover the ghetto, ancient Rome and one museum without rushing. Florence and Venice are a day each. Naples works as a day trip from Rome. A week covers Rome plus two others comfortably.
When to go
Synagogues and Jewish museums close on Shabbat and festivals, and the calendar moves every year. Around Pesach and the High Holidays the whole country fills up. April–May and September–October are the best weeks.
Keeping kosher
Rome’s kosher restaurants sit almost entirely on one street in the ghetto, and after three nights you have eaten in all of them. A private kosher chef and kosher-friendly accommodation solve most of it.
What must be booked ahead
Borghese Gallery tickets are hard to find online and often gone weeks ahead — though it is always worth trying in person. The catacombs need prior authorisation. The Venice synagogues run on fixed slots. The Colosseum and the Vatican are timed. Most of it cannot be improvised on the day.
One person, from arrival to departure
Guides certified by the Jewish Community of Rome, kosher meals, transfers, tickets and the whole itinerary — arranged together rather than booked in pieces.
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Tell me what you have in mind
Which cities, roughly when, how many of you, and how you keep kosher. I will come back with an itinerary, not a brochure.