The Venetian Ghetto

There is no higher credential for an Italian city than being able to claim Roman origins. I have been stopped in the street in Mantua before by a local man who wanted to make sure I had mentioned to my group that their city was older than Rome and was the birthplace of Virgil. The Sienese invented a spurious tale about a founder called Senius who was the son of Roman-reject Remus. One city that, for all its glitz and glamour, cannot claim Roman origins is Venice, whose beginnings are as humble as could be, as refugees from Germanic invasions took shelter in the muddy banks of the lagoon. But humble beginnings make for ambitious citizens, and the Venetians lost no time in making up what they lacked in ancestry by making an awful lot of money.

The key to their success was that everyone was welcome as long as they could benefit the city, and in particular its finances. Unlike it’s Italian neighbours, whose squabbling dynasties and political factions ruptured any long-term stability, Venice established a republic that lasted over 1000 years, founded on the principle that no individual was more important that the State.

Barely tolerated elsewhere in Italy, Jews were able to live in Venice as they undoubtedly benefited the city. Not that they were treated well – they were used as scapegoats to reduce internal political tension and excluded from all trade and positions except lending money (which was prohibited by Christian doctrine). In 1508 when Venice was under attack from the pan-European League of Cambrai, the Jews of the Veneto took refuge in the lagoon and were welcomed as they brought with them much-needed wealth in a time of crisis. But a mere 8 years later, March 29th 1516, the Doge decreed that all Jews should be housed in the secure area around the old foundry, locked in at midnight and guarded (at their own expense) by Christian gatekeepers. From the Italian word gettare meaning ‘to cast’, the first geto was born.

Visiting the Ghetto today is one of Venice’s most rewarding experiences, but one that is rarely at the top of any visitors list. I take groups of students when teaching with Art History Abroad, an English company that runs 2 and 6-week courses in Italy, spending 5 and 10 days respectively in Venice. It’s a opportunity to delve beyond the usual tick-box of tourist sights to experiencing something of the city’s human history, and nowhere has quite the resonance and evocative atmosphere of the Ghetto. First, it’s far away (insofar as anywhere can be in Venice) in Cannaregio, the quarter of Venice most devoid of tourists and replete with atmosphere. Secondly, there is no obvious sight to see. It is an opportunity to let the students look and unravel it for themselves.

The first thing they notice is how tall the buildings are. Some reaching seven stories, and the small space between suggesting very low ceilings. The buildings of the Ghetto Novo (the new Ghetto formed in 1516) form an almost complete ring, entirely surrounded by water. Looking closer at the passageway leading to one of the three bridges, square indentations in the stone were left by the hinges on the gates that closed the Ghetto by night, until they were removed by Napoleon’s troops in 1797. This is one shady memory of the darker history of this peaceful corner of the city. It provokes an argument between two students as to whether Jews were better off in Venice – was it good that they were allowed to live and work, or is liberty an inalienable right? This ambiguity leads onto Venice’s most famous Jew, Shylock. One student recalls his most famous speech, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” – the ultimate retort within a play that was seen as so anti-Semitic that it was broadcast as propaganda in Nazi Germany.

During the German occupation of Venice, over 200 Venetian Jews were deported. Only seven survived. The memorials on the walls of the Ghetto Novo are a painful reminder of this city’s place in the holocaust. But hidden away behind humble walls are reminders of the glorious past of the Jews of Venice – six synagogues, belonging to the different national communities, dating back the 16th and 17th centuries. They are invisible from the outside, as they were forbidden to build them as separate so they were incorporated into the apartment blocks. Awash with rich wood-carvings, gilding and chandeliers, they are a sign of the Jewish community’s prosperity. Venice was one of the great centres of rabbinical culture in Europe, particularly in Hebrew book-printing outside the ghetto walls. Bankers, physicians, poets and theologians created a golden age of commerce and scholarship renowned throughout Europe, providing doctors to the Queen of France and Pope Paul III and travelling to start new communities in London and Amsterdam. Henry VIII consulted a Venetian rabbi in his divorce suit against Katherine of Aragon.

In many ways, Venice itself was a pariah in much the same way as the Jews – trading equally with Christian and Turk, they were hated and envied, and like the Jews were children of the Exodus. The doge even ordered protection of the Jews, while Christian friars were preaching for their death. It was perfectly expressed by Shakespeare’s merchant, Antonio.

The duke cannot deny the course of law;
For the commodity that strangers have
With us in Venice if it be denied,
Will much impeach the justice of this state;
Since that the trade and profit of this city
Consisteth of all nations.

But all this came at a price. By the time the Ghetto was dismantled by Napoleon’s troops the Jewish community had been bled dry by the state – forbidden ownership of property, they were charged an extortionate rent on the houses they were forced to occupy. They were forced to keep open their loan banks long after they had ceased to be profitable, and paid for the privilege. Finally, in 1735, the Inquisitors informed the Venetian Senate that the Jewish community was officially bankrupt. By the end of the century, Venice herself was over too.

A Walk through Early Christian Rome - the Coelian Hill

We emerge from the Metro at San Giovanni, faced by the magnificent stretch of the Aurelian Walls.  The marble gate is the renaissance Porta San Giovanni, part of Sixtus V's urban plan of the 1570s.  On the left-hand side is the ancient Roman Porta Asinaria ('Gate of the Ass-drivers') a southern (and clearly not terribly salubrious) gate to the city.  Immediately ahead is the majestic facade of San Giovanni and across on the right is a huge mosaic-decorated apse, part of the Triclinium Leonianum, part of the demolished papal dining room built by Leo III shortly after he crowned Charlemagne in Rome in 800.  

The mosaic survived 200 years after the papal palace was destroyed, but was 'restored' (the work is essentially an imaginative copy) in the 18th Century.  Its iconography is no less interesting, however - the upper corners of Leo and Charlemagne kneeling at the feet of St Peter and Christ with Pope Sylvester and Constantine shows the deliberate correlation of Imperial/Papal relations of the Fourth Century Roman Empire and the Ninth Century Holy Roman Empire - it was at this time that the legend of the Donation of Constantine was invented, fueling the central power struggle of the Middle Ages between Pope and Emperor.

Passing the Scala Santa and the obelisk (Rome's tallest, oldest (15th Century BC) and perhaps most beautiful) We cross to the right on the far corner of the square, on the right of which is the Ospedale Di San Giovanni, founded suitably in 1348, the year of the Black Death.  The road forks (in the centre is the Irish College that contains the heart of patriot parliamentarian Daniel O'Connell who died here, leaving 'my soul to heaven, my body to Ireland and my heart to Rome'.  Quite literally.  We take the left-hand fork, the Via San Stefano Rotondo.

Via S Stefano Rotondo - the Claudian Aqueduct

The right-hand wall is formed by the walled-up arches of the Claudian aqueduct, built by Nero to serve his palace on the Palatine - we shall follow its path on our walk.  Rome's aqueducts supplied the city with 1000 litres of water per person per day.  At the end of the street (home to the military hospital) on the left is the church of S Stefano Rotondo, set back from the road in a shady garden.  According to Georgina Masson, Palestrina lived in a small house in the surrounding vineyards.

Interior, S Stefano Rotondo

Pope St Simplicius' 5th Century church consisted of a series of three concentric arcades; a transverse arcade was added for support in the 12th Century and in 1453 Nicholas V ordered Bernardo Rossellino to wall up the second set of arches, dramatically altering the aspect of the church.  It must have communicated an extraordinary sense of scale when the original 34 columns were exposed as the sense of space is still immense.  In contrast with this powerfully sober architecture are an series of gruesome paintings along the outer walls.  Added in the 16th Century on the order of the Jesuits, this is a catalogue of martyrdoms arranged by each persecuting emperor and painted in gory detail that would somehow have inspired fearful awe in zealous missionaries.  In true Counter-Reformation style, the sadistic images are annotated with a helpful code, with letters corresponding to the key below like a scientific diagram.  Here is Charles Dicken's take on matters from his Pictures of Italy (1846):

To single out details from the great dream of Roman Churches, would be the wildest occupation in the world. But St. Stefano Rotondo, a damp, mildewed vault of an old church in the outskirts of Rome, will always struggle uppermost in my mind, by reason of the hideous paintings with which its walls are covered. These represent the martyrdoms of saints and early Christians; and such a panorama of horror and butchery no man could imagine in his sleep, though he were to eat a whole pig raw, for supper. Grey-bearded men being boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts, worried by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up small with hatchets: women having their breasts torn with iron pinchers, their tongues cut out, their ears screwed off, their jaws broken.... So insisted on, and laboured at, besides, that every sufferer gives you the same occasion for wonder as poor old Duncan awoke, in Lady Macbeth, when she marvelled at his having so much blood in him.

Exit and turn right, onto the Via della Navicella.  Here, under another section of Nero's aqueduct adapted as a traffic cone, is the church of S. Maria in Domnica, opposite the Navicella itself, the 'little boat' copied for Leo X from a classical original.  We enter the church through the dignified facade, attributed to Andrea Sansovino, to be greeted by the magnificent mosaic apse commissioned by Pope Paschal I, the 9th Century restorer of the church familiar to those who have visited S. Prassede.  Here again is Paschal himself, kneeling at the Virgin's feet wearing the square halo of the living.  In contrast with the usual Byzantine austerity, the setting is unusually verdant, a beautiful garden where the Virgin is attended by angels whose blue haloes head infinitely into the distance.

Apsidal Mosaic, S Maria in Domnica

From his churches, Paschal seems like one of the cheerier early Popes, but his reputation is rather shady - he died whilst under investigation for the blinding and beheading of two papal officials who were preparing to testify against him.  Rather like Italian politics today, if a little more gruesome.

Arch of Dolabella and Hospital of St Thomas

Leaving the church and turning left we are greeted by a medieval gateway surmounted by a mosaic, Christ is shown with a black and white man either side.  This is the entrance to the Hospital of St Thomas, founded by S Giovanni di Matha, founder of the Trinitarian order in 1198, whose red and blue cross can be seen above the mosaic.  Their main duty was to raise the ransom for Christian prisoners - principally those captured  by Arab pirates in the Mediterranean - hence the prisoners either side of Christ.  Notice on the marble arch below the signature of Master Jacobus and his son Cosmato, the original 'Cosmati' of the Roman Mosaic school.  The hospital is gone but the Trinitarians are still there - above the Arch of Dolabella (10 AD) is the room where S Giovanni di Matha is said to have died in 1213. 

 

Mosaic over entrance to Hospital of St Thomas

Follow this road under the arch; immediately on the right is a tall portion of the aqueduct.  The wall on the right conceals the Passionist Congregation of St Paul, whose orto is on the site of one of Nero's nymphaeums in the extensive gardens of the Domus Aurea.  Emerging into a small square, we are faced by the Church of Ss. Giovanni e Paolo.  Practically nothing here is later than the Middle Ages; even the road name, the Clivo di Scauro, survives from Antiquity.  Beneath the campanile is a section of the Temple of Claudius, built by his fourth wife, Agrippina, shortly after his death and deification - she allegedly had a hand in the former.  Go through the gate below to see some more of these colossal foundations.  On the other side of the square is a series of 3rd Century tabernae and the entrance to the public park of the Villa Celimontana.

Piazza Ss Giovanni e Paolo, Campanile with Roman Foundations

The church's exterior is promising, the columns either side of the doorway belonging to the original 4th Century structure built by Pammachius, a senator and friend of St Jerome who died in monastic seclusion in 410, the year of Rome's sacking by Alaric.  Inside, however, there are no signs of even the medieval stage of the building under its 18th Century accretions, beyond its Cosmatesque floor.  The gaudy chandeliers are a surprising inclusion - they come from the Waldorf Astoria in New York, whose Archbishop, Cardinal Spellman sponsored the restoration of 1951.  The robed flower pots along the nave are a clue that the church is popular for weddings.  To get a sense of its ancient origins, one must exit, turn right, and head under the arches of the Clivus Scauri where there is a doorway into the Roman houses under the church, 

undoubtedly one of the city's hidden treasures.

We enter a row of rooms containing frescoes from the 9th Century, when these were used as chapels after the church was built.  The next series of rooms contain the oldest paintings - pagan images of naked youths, festoons and a cheerful array of birds and putti.  Behind is a nymphaeum, part of the same house with a beautiful mythological fresco depicting gods (possibly Venus Marina, or Proserpina returning to Hades) and jolly boating cherubs.  It was found in 1909, covered by a plaster layer that was probably added in the Third Century when the houses became Christian property.  

It was at this time that frescoes of a clearly Christian nature were added, above a pair of graves that are still visible.  The tradition, dating to the Sixth Century, is that John and Paul were officials of Constantine who retired to the Coelian.  On the accession of Julian the Apostate in 360, they were recalled to military service, refused, and awaited sentence in their home where they were discovered and executed and later buried, in contravention of the strict laws forbidding any burials within the city walls.  Controversial though this story is, the frescoes in a small confessio above the graves themselves show a scene of martyrdom - whoever was buried here was the object of veneration from a very early stage.  

 Under Ss Giovanni e Paolo, view of the saints' graves and the fenestrella confessionis beyond

The Antiquarium contains an interesting series of finds, including the beautiful 12th Century fresco of Christ with the archangels that was originally over the entrance, and the original 12th Century Islamic pottery that once decorated the Campanile.

Continuing down the Clivo di Scauro, we pass the compound of S. Gregorio Magno, and the ruins of its 6th Century library, probably built by Gregory's immediate predecessor Agapitus to combat Rome's illiteracy.  We drop down to the Via di San Gregorio, with the final section of aqueduct and the Palatine in front - on the right is the facade of Gregory's church, with the eagles and dragon of the Borghese pope Paul V conversing above its doorways.  If, unlike me, you arrive before lunchtime, head into the little gate on the right of the facade to see the chapels of S. Barbara, S. Andrea and S. Silvia, with delightful frescoes by Domenichino, Lanfranco and Reni.  Or leave it for another day - after wandering on the Coelian Hill, the 16th Century can seem like an all-too-modern shock to the system.  

Sagrantino - Umbrian Wine beyond compare

Umbria is the business.  Driving along winding roads to precipitous hill-towns is a refreshing experience after spending many weeks blithely cruising along Italy's superstradas from one city to another, so now is the time to explore the places in between.

Montefalco is one such place - known as the 'Balcony of Umbria' for its panoramic views, it is approached past endless vineyards along its slopes.  I had visited Montefalco before, in August last year, to see the work of Benozzo Gozzoli in the church of San Francesco.  Familiar to visitors to the Palazzo Medici in Florence, Benozzo was a favourite collaborator of Fra Angelico (praise from Caesar).  His wonderful decoration of the apse of San Francesco bring a heartiness of storytelling to his master's calm, contemplative tradition - joyous details such as a disgruntled bishop shrouding Francis after he cast off his clothes bring a note of levity to some glorious painting.  The church is now (rather less edifying) the Museo Civico, but at least its new status means that all the frescoes are in remarkable condition.

This visit was not so artistically driven, but focussed rather on the outskirts, and the vines growing there in particular.  Having tried my first Sagrantino di Montefalco at the end of last year I have been waiting for my opportunity to return, so it was with much anticipation that I headed to the headquarters of Arnaldo Caprai, leading producers of Montefalco who have brought international attention to the local Sagrantino grape.  Local is certainly the word - only produced around Montefalco, but it competes with the very best Brunellos in terms of quality.

Caprai's state-of-the-art tasting room was a sign that this was no provincial backwater, and the wines followed suit, from the Rosso di Montefalco blend to the '25 Anni' Sagrantino, were astonishing.  I will spare you any extensive tasting notes from a novice like myself and merely say that if you see the word Sagrantino on a menu or a shelf anytime soon, buy buy buy.