In late 2023, we traveled to the Italian capital for a week filled with ancient historical sites, Italian culture, and plenty of delicious food.

But I’m always one to reflect on the more modern fault lines that run through a place. And so we took a walk to Rome’s Jewish quarter, very close to the River Tiber, tucked in among towering ruins of the ancient city.

Rome’s Jewish Ghetto has origins in the 1550s when the city’s Jewish population was walled in and forced to work menial labor by the power of the reigning Papal States.

In a tiny neighborhood built among towering ruins of the Roman Empire, the population scraped out an existence from the mid-16th century through to the 1870s when the Ghetto was dismantled after power in Italy was wrested from the Church and into the hands of the united Kingdom of Italy.

The neighborhood remained the center of Jewish life in Rome, however, until October 16, 1943 when Nazi occupiers raided the neighborhood and deported over 1,000 Jewish men, women, and children to Auschwitz. Only 16 survived the end of the Second World War.

Today, the neighborhood celebrates its Jewish heritage and “Stolpersteine,” stumbling stones, mark the doorsteps of those deported in October 1943.

If you visit, you’ll find some powerful memorials, a Jewish Museum, and a host of local restaurants serving up Roman fare that has origins in the poor, working class Jewish neighborhood that once stood here until the Nazis nearly wiped it out.

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This post originally existed as a Facebook post on Jake Wynn – Public Historian that was made during our visit.

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