ITINERARY

Discovering the Jewish Ferrara

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Ferrara's Jewish community has very ancient origins, and the city preserves many evidences of its history: from the period of maximum flourishing under the protection of the Este family to that of segregation in the 'ghetto' district during papal rule and the fascist era.

A visit to Ferrara is a perfect opportunity to rediscover the history and traditions of this community: the way it interacted with the city in different historical periods, the places that preserve its memory but also the places that represent its life today.

Ferrara Ebraica Ghetto Pierluigi Benini
Ferrara Ebraica Ghetto Pierluigi Benini
Ferrara Ebraica Ghetto Pierluigi Benini
Ferrara Ebraica Ghetto Pierluigi Benini
Ferrara Ebraica Ghetto Pierluigi Benini
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Ferrara Ebraica Ghetto Pierluigi Benini
MEIS Museo Nazionale Italiano Dell'Ebraismo e della Shoah
Cimitero Ebraico Ferrara
Cimitero Ebraico Ferrara
MEIS Museo Nazionale Italiano Dell'Ebraismo e della Shoah

Let's discover Jewish Ferrara together:

The Synagogues and the Jewish Museum throughout history and in the present day

The visit to the synagogues in Via Mazzini introduces us to the 'Ghetto' area that occupied the areas around Via Vittoria and Via Vignatagliata. The façade would not stand out from the surrounding houses were it not for the memorial plaques. Inside the Synagogue building there is a collection of liturgical objects, 18th-century furnishings and printed documents with works by the famous Isacco Lampronti, a doctor and theologian who lived in the late 17th and early 18th century.

Through the streets of the Ghetto

The Jewish quarter is now immersed in the quietness of mediaeval Ferrara. In Via Vignatagliata an inscription marks the small school that accommodated Jewish students after 1938. The houses are simple and lean against each other with a graceful disorder; the cobblestones of the narrow streets are accompanied by the ever-present terracotta, a characteristic brick material of the city.

The Jewish Cemetery, the place of memory

The Jewish Cemetery is located within the Walls and borders the Christian Certosa Cemetery (access from Via delle Vigne near the caretaker's house). It is a large garden flooded everywhere with lawns. Here Giorgio Bassani now rests.

The Levantine Cemetery in Via Arianuova bears witness to the presence of the refined and cultured Sephardic community that arrived in Ferrara in 1492 at the invitation of Ercole I d'Este (visible only from the outside).

National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah - MEIS

The site chosen as the location for the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah is the former city prison complex in via Piangipane, built in 1912 and decommissioned in 1992, in the south-west of the city. Guiding this choice was the desire to recover a place of segregation and exclusion for the city and to make a space of marginalisation, located a short distance from the former ghetto area of Ferrara, open and frequented. The challenge is to be a place accessible to all, usable at all ages, without any distinction of gender, ethnicity or religion.