Centred on lively Via Portico d’Ottavia, the Jewish Ghetto is a wonderfully atmospheric area studded with artisans’ studios, vintage clothes shops, kosher bakeries and popular trattorias.
Rome’s Jewish community dates back to the 2nd century BC, making it one of the oldest in Europe. At one point there were as many as 13 synagogues in the city but Titus’s defeat of Jewish rebels in Jerusalem in AD 70 changed the status of Rome’s Jews from citizen to slave. Confinement to the Ghetto came in 1555 when Pope Paul IV ushered in a period of official intolerance that lasted, on and off, until the 20th century. Ironically, though, confinement meant that Jewish cultural and religious identity survived intact.
