Jewish Ferrara

There is hidden soul to Ferrara, its Jewish one, an important part of the city's community

There is hidden soul to Ferrara, its Jewish one, an important part of the city's community, composed of the Synagogue, the one-time 'Ghetto', the Cemetery in via Vigne, the Little Levantine Cemetery.

Through the streets of the Ghetto

The area involved in the former Ghetto, institued in the17th Century, is constituted by today's Via Mazzini, Via Vittoria and Via Vignatagliata, where, in the courtyards, the secret passageways, and on the evocative balconies, you can breathe in the intense life of the Ghetto.

The Synagogue and the Jewish Museum.

The front of the building is distinguished from its neighbours by the memorial stones at the entrance. Among the most important parts inside are the former German Synagogue, used for the most solemn ceremonies, the erstwhile Italian Synagogue, and the Fanese Oratory, used for Sabbath worship. In the historic building there is also th Jewish Museum: liturgicxal objects, 18 Century furnishing, and printed documents with works of the celebrated Isacco Lampronti, a doctor and theologian who lived between the end of the 17 and the beginning of the 18 Century.

The Jewish Cemetery, a place of memory

The Jewish Cemetery, shielded by the walls, is a wide gardenwhere the white of gravestones emerges between isolated pines and clumps of grass. Here rests the writer Giorgio Bassani, one of the most illustrious representatives of Ferrara's Jewish Community, whose works contain some of the most beautiful literary images of Ferrara.

MEIS

Waiting for the conclusion in Ferrara of the new National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah - MEIS - inaugurated with an important exhibition "Jews, an Italian story: the first thousand years" which illustrates how the Jews were in our peninsula already from ancient Rome, set up in the main building.