Renaissance Discoveries: The Venetian Ghetto

In this video we move to Venice to look at one of the innovations and legacies of the Italian Renaissance that’s less admirable and enviable than many of the others in this series. We look at how Italian cities, above all Venice, dealt with their Jewish populations. In 1516 a Venetian politician named Zaccaria Dolfin advocated restricting the Jewish community—many of whose members were refugees fleeing war—to an island that had once served as the dumping ground for an iron foundry. His proposal passed through the Venetian Senate, and for much of the next three centuries Venice’s Jews lived in the Ghetto, a word the Venetians gave to the world. This video follows the history of the Jews in Venice, covers the circumstances behind their confinement, and looks at what life was like in the Ghetto.