The Jewish Venice and other Venice, Italy Things to Do Tips

Campo del Ghetto Nuovo is the world's oldest ghetto and the one that gave its name to Jewish communities around the world. In the early 16th century the jews in Venice were confined to one island of Cannareggio and the only solution to their condition was to built upwards. This is how the 'skyscrapers' of Venice were built, blocks of five or six floors and back then they used to be the highest blocks in Europe. The site was formerly an iron foundry and cannons were made there. The world ghetto comes from gettare - meaning to cast. The community lived on this site until 1797 when Napoleon had the gates torn down and from then on Jews could live where they wished. There are only few Jewish families left today.
We visited the Jewish museum, Museo della Comunita Ebraica and went on a guided tour to the synagogues (you can enter only on those tours). We also visited Bet Chabad where mr. haiamisa prayed (see the pictures). Bet Chabad invited us for a free shabbat meal on friday night, but we were too tired (and it was too hot in August 2003) to go.

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We visited Murano by a vaporetti. The trip was great fun, the vaporetti stopped also on the cemetery island - it was strange to see an island cemetery.
Murano is lovely, known as "a mini Venice" and glass has been made there for centuries. We visited the glass museum - Museo Vetrario. Highly recommended!

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We visited the Doge's Palace which is one of the main attractions. We bought a combined ticket that gave us entrance also to museums at San Marco's square. The archeological museum was very interesting, unfortunately I don't have good pictures from there.

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I love visiting towers and seeing bird's eye views of places. This tower on San Marco's square was great. We went up by an elevator and could admire Venice from high above. See pictures that we took from the tower.
Interesting facts:
The tower was built in the early 16th century. It collapsed in a heap in 1902 and amazingly only the custodian's cat died.

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And of course one of the main things to do in Venice is to get your photo taken with the pigeons. There is a stall that sells food for the pigeons in case you didn't bring bread with you.

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