Antico quartiere ebraico (the Jewish quarter)

The ghetto was instituted on 14 July 1555 by the bull Cum nimis absurdum of Paul IV, which revoked the community's rights and enclosed it behind a wall with two gates, opened at dawn and shut an hour after sunset between November and Easter and two hours after sunset in the rest of the year. The enclosure was trapezoidal, and the wall cut piazza Giudea in two. Christian owners of buildings inside kept them but, under the jus gazzagà, could neither evict their tenants nor raise the rents. About 2,000 Jews lived in Rome at the start of the 15th century, 1,200 of them in Sant'Angelo; in the plague of 1656, 800 of about 4,000 inhabitants of the quarter died. The gates were opened in 1798 under the Roman Republic and a tree of liberty was planted in piazza Giudea, and Napoleon's fall undid it. Pius IX ordered the wall demolished in 1847, and the work had to be done at night against Roman resistance. Only after 20 September 1870 did Roman Jews stop being second-class citizens. The quarter was demolished in 1885 and new building went up around the new synagogue. Brass plates set into the paving of the quarter, the pietre d'inciampo, each carry the name of a person deported and never returned.