Venice, the centuries-old tourist destination of Italy, is full of surprises.
For example, one morning in May I stood with other visitors taking photos of a handsome gondolier ferrying giggling tourists down a canal. Classic vacation scene, right? But in the next moment I happened down a picturesque side street and found the building where Mozart had lived when he came to the city's carnival in 1771. Now, that's something you don't see every day.
Still in the same neighbourhood, the oldest section of town, I wandered in to a shop with a window bedecked with masks and costumes to watch a grizzled old leatherworker carving a carnival mask, looking as if he had been at the same task since the 15th century. Not too far from his shop stands another amazing sight: the glittering Theatre Fenice, originally dating from 1792, burnt down in 1996 by an arsonist, but rebuilt in 2003 to once again offer opera premieres.
Thousands of visitors see Venice every year. Most pursue the same routes, walking to and from the fabulous St. Mark's Square for an evening promenade, or they loll on a water taxi, cruising up and down the s-bends of the Grand Canal. Not many find the ghetto.
I discovered one of the city's most interesting sights during a visit to the ancient Jewish ghetto, reportedly the world's first. Jews began settling in Venice in the thirteenth century, and by 1516 felt the brunt of anti-Jewish sentiment. The city's rulers confined the influx to one location, a small, dirty island with a foundry on it. The Italian word for foundry was getto and it gives its name to today's Ghetto Nuovo. The Jews were allowed to leave by day and their gates were locked at night. Despite the hardship, many Jews flocked to Venice crowding the area, and they began to build upward, making the world's first skyscrapers, six-storey buildings with synagogues on the top floor. Jews were allowed to be moneylenders, run pawnshops, trade in textiles or become doctors based on their superior knowledge of medicine.
Today, only a small Jewish population lives in Venice and the Ghetto Nuovo area is open to tourists as a proud reminder of their heritage. After I had crossed the Guglie Bridge, not far from Venice's train station, and walked along a canal embankment, it was easy to spot the sign directing me to a dark corridor, the portal to the ghetto area, especially as the sign hangs in front of the city's kosher restaurant, the Gam-Gam.
In the Ghetto's main square I found the Museo Ebraico, a museum that displays Jewish ritual objects, silverware and spice boxes and where English-speaking tours of the synagogues can be arranged. One wall of the square remains stark and ugly, topped by barbed wire. This brick memorial wall remembers the holocaust, and the artist, Arbit Blatas, has sculpted seven reliefs that depict scenes of anguish from the recent past: citizens gathered prior to deportation and a row of prisoners in front of a firing squad.
Today, the shops and galleries that surround the square embrace life. The Venetian glass sold there offers goblets etched with the Star of David and glass bottle stoppers for kosher wine. Visitors can take a break from pasta at a restaurant with an outdoor patio or sit by a scenic canal at the Gam-Gam to enjoy falafel, presented elegantly with nine accompanying plates of chopped egg, hummus, relish, etc.
More about this interesting aspect of Venice can be found at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
