Photo: Daniel Ventura, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Who initially used to live in Venice’s ghetto?

The Venetian Ghetto was the area of Venice, Italy, where Jews were forced to live since a 1516 decree of the Venetian Senate and until Napoleon’s army occupied Venice in 1797. The English word ghetto is derived from the Jewish ghetto in Venice. The ghetto’s 16th-century synagogues have remained operational continuously, except for the years of World War II during the German occupation, and are now being restored in a 6 million euros project.