Bologna is home to one of the most deeply rooted Jewish communities in Italy, especially from the late Middle Ages, between the 15th and 16th centuries, when it settled permanently and began to spread throughout the urban fabric.
Even today, the layout of the historic centre and a number of monuments are important testimonies of the Jewish presence in Bologna.
Our itinerary begins from the most representative district, the Jewish Ghetto.
Nestled between the university citadel and the Two Towers, it has retained its original layout of narrow streets and suspended passages, covered bridges and small windows. Enlivened today by workshops once frequented by merchants, bankers and chandlers, the ghetto is certainly one of the city's most interesting and evocative areas to wander through.
Examples include the quaint Via dell'inferno or Via de' Giudei, where a plaque at number 16 recalls the location of the ghetto's only synagogue, in use from the time of its establishment until 1569, the year of the expulsion of the Jews from Bologna.
It is definitely worth continuing your visit by stopping at the MEB - Museo Ebraico di Bologna, opened in 1999. A place of promotion of the rich Jewish cultural heritage of Bologna and Emilia Romagna, it retraces the millennial history of the Jewish community, narrated in part through the testimonies received from synagogues, cemeteries, and former ghettos (furnishings, religious ornaments, sacred books).
Two rooms are dedicated to the long permanence of Jews in Bologna and Emilia Romagna, from the Middle Ages to contemporary times. A further section is available for exhibitions, meetings, debates and educational activities for children.
A little further away from the old ghetto is our next stop, the Synagogue in Via de' Gombruti 7. At the end of the 18th century, the Jewish community, previously expelled during the 16th century, slowly began to recover and in 1868 a room was rented in this street where, following subsequent extensions in the early 20th century, the new synagogue was definitively installed.
With its original Art Nouveau façade destroyed by bombing in 1943, the current building is a modern reinterpretation of the earlier design. Along the adjacent Via Mario Finzi, a plaque commemorates the names of the 84 Bolognese Jews deported to the German extermination camps.
Another symbol of the Jewish community in the city is the recent Holocaust Memorial in viale Matteotti, right behind the railway station.
The monument, consisting of two 10-metre high steel blocks facing each other, was designed as a magnet to attract people, make them reflect, discuss, and think about the Shoah and the discrimination suffered by Jews.
Our itinerary on Judaism in Bologna ends at no specific place, but rather at various scattered spots in the centre where the so-called Stolpersteine can be found, a memorial consisting of small square blocks of stone, covered in shiny brass, facing away from the last homes of victims of fascist and Nazi persecution.
The initiative, conceived by German artist Gunter Demnig to preserve the memory of deported souls in extermination camps, has been adopted by many European cities, including Bologna.
You can consult a complete list of Bologna's Stolpersteine on the Municipality's website.
