It was the circumscribed area near San Geremia that, from 1516, isolated and segregated the Jewish community from the rest of the Venetian inhabitants. There are three sections: the Ghetto Vechio, the Novo and finally the Nuovissimo, the latter only opened in 1633.
Today, despite the continuous flow of tourists, you can still feel a strong sense of belonging, commemoration and closeness to the victims of the genocide, with its numerous plaques bearing witness to what happened.
In the 14th century, in the westernmost part of the sestiere, between the Cannaregio Canal (Rio) and the Agudi bridge (today the Ghetto Vecchio bridge), there was a piece of land called the Geto de rame, because there was a foundry with 14 furnaces there: the Geto Vechio. The small island in front of it, a muddy and slimy area where the foundry waste was dumped, was called the ‘terrain of the geto’ (clay). However, in the 15th century it housed a bombard foundry and took the name of Geto Novo.
When the foundries became insufficient, the two plots of land were sold to noble families, such as the Minottos, who owned a large part of the Old Ghetto, and the Brolos, who built about 25 houses along the perimeter of the field in the New Ghetto, opened the bridge towards San Girolamo, and dug three wells, some of which still bear noble insignia today. It was in this last enclosed area (Campo di Ghetto Nuovo), surrounded by low, two-storey houses, so much so that it was sometimes referred to as the castle, that the first Jews (mainly German and Italian) were confined in 1516. At the beginning of the 16th century, they lived in the various districts of Venice; while in the long streets that lead to the Fondamenta di Cannaregio (Old Ghetto) other Jews from the Levant were welcomed in 1541 and from the West (Spain) in 1589. Only later, in 1633, was the New Ghetto opened, behind the New Ghetto.
‘The place was delimited by two doors which, as the Senate had specified on 29 March 1516 - under the dogate of Leonardo Loredan, would be opened in the morning at the sound of the ‘marangona’ (the bell of San Marco that dictated the rhythms of the city's activity) and closed again in the evening at midnight by four Christian custodians, paid by the Jews and required to reside on the site itself, without families so they could dedicate themselves fully to their work of control. In addition, two high walls should have been built (which however were never erected) to enclose the area on the side of the canals that would have surrounded it, walling up all the banks that opened onto them. Two boats belonging to the Council of Ten, with guards paid for by the new ‘castellans’, would circulate at night in the canal around the island to guarantee its safety. The following 1st of April, the same ‘cry’ was proclaimed at Rialto and at the bridges of all the city districts where the Jews resided’.
The word ‘Ghetto’
‘It is the opinion to send them all to the new Ghetto’: thus Marin Sanudo in his Diaries.
And the word appears in old documents with various spellings: ghèto, getto, ghetto, geto, but always indicating, after 1516, the place where the Jews were confined. That ‘stretch of land called the getto or the ghetto’ - adds Tassini in his Curiosità veneziane - ‘was the site of the public foundries, where the bombards were thrown’ and therefore ‘the place was called el getto because there were more than 12 furnaces and bronze was cast there’, as Sabellico testifies.
Ghetto, therefore, derives from the name of the island where the ancient foundries were located. This is the hypothesis, put forward by Teza, which today finds the greatest consensus among scholars.
However, many other explanations have been proposed: from the Hebrew get, a libellus of repudiation, used, according to ancient documents, by the Jews themselves to indicate ‘ separation'; from the German gehegt, closed; from the old French gueat, guard; from getto, pier, quay, on which the Jews who fled from Spain in 1492 would have been thrown in the port of Genoa; from the Italian borghetto; from the old English gatwon, road; but these are all etymologies that are more difficult to accept.
It is therefore up to Venice to have spread throughout the world the word that today indicates segregation and social discrimination.
A segregation that, at first, could be seen as blatant discrimination, but that ended up becoming a useful defence, as inside the Ghetto the Jews became autonomous, almost masters of their actions, in many cases much more so than many inhabitants and subjects who lived at the complete mercy of the doge, the prince, the pope or the king.
As Riccardo Calimani writes:
[...] the Ghetto ‘... despite the rampant precariousness, it had, in spite of everything, powers and privileges that allowed it to make itself heard and to deal with its interlocutors on the outside, with a freedom of initiative that was surprising in some cases’.