Jewish Florence

Art & Culture

If you think you have already visited everything in the city and you are wandering a little dazed between shops and other tourists like you, know that Florence can offer you a different day, discovering the widespread traces of Jewish culture: an alternative way to explore the city of the Medici - if possible, around January 27, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day - and an infallible system to get in touch with a world different from yours.

The history of the Jewish community of Florence dates back to the XII century, but we have more information from the end of the XV and the XVI centuries, especially when the Medici became Grand Dukes of Florence. The suggested itinerary aims to touch various points of the city that have been of great importance for the life of the Florentine Jewish community, starting from the Piazza della Repubblica where the old ghetto was located before being destroyed following the demolitions of the capital Florence. To find concrete remains and evidences of the ghetto of Florence, you need to visit the ground floor of the Museum of San Marco. In addition, the city of Florence still has a Jewish Monumental Cemetery in the Oltrarno area. Our itinerary includes a visit to the wonderful nineteenth-century Synagogue, considered among the most beautiful in Europe, as well as the Jewish museum and the Auschwitz Memorial. Another place, sadly known, is platform 16 at Santa Maria Novella Train Station.

Then, there are the stumbling stones (in German Stolpersteine), because they make the passers-by "stumble" and remind them of what happened right there in that point of the city, during the Nazi-Fascist occupation. They are small monuments to the memory, one of the darkest periods in the history of our nation. They are brass squares of the size of a "sanpietrino" (10x10 cm), set in the cobblestones in front of the house of the victims of deportations to the concentration camps. Above are engraved their names and surnames, the dates of the capture and, when known, the one of their death. The memento-works are creations of the German artist Gunter Demnig who conceived and realized them in the early nineties.

Recently a mural dedicated to Anna Frank has been painted on the walls of the homonymous school.

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Firenze ebraica

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Via dei Ramaglianti

In 1439 this street, very short and narrow, was called via dei Giudei (Jewish st.), because the Signoria, concerned about the development of the usury exercised by Florentine bankers, called the Jews from other cities, authorizing them to practice the art of exchange and loan under certain rules, including that of living with families all in this street, where they remained until 1560, when Cosimo I drove them out into the Ghetto district in Mercato Vecchio. Until 1944, before the area was mined by the retreating Germans, traces of the former synagogue existed in a building on the street.

Via dei Ramaglianti, 50125 Firenze FI, Italia

Piazza della Repubblica

Cosimo I de 'Medici, in 1571 issued the provisions that relegated the "Jewish Nation" within the perimeters of the area then called "Frascato". It was an infamous and dilapidated area whose buildings were renovated according to the project of the architect Bernardo Buontalenti through the reduction of all buildings to a single immense building. The entrances consisted of only three entrances, equipped with iron gates to close at midnight. The block, located north of the Mercato Vecchio and configured as a small walled city, was delimited by Piazza del Mercato Vecchio, via dell'Arcivescovado (now via Roma), via dei Naccaioli (currently Brunelleschi) and via della Vacca ( today's via dei Pecori); inside there were two synagogues, various schools, halls for parties, bathrooms, shops, in a self-sufficient group in which the Jewish population could live protected. Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo sold to the Jews all the properties included in the ghetto enclosure but, starting from 1848 when the forced residence was abolished and the Jewish families of better condition were able to move elsewhere, a new and elegant Jewish neighborhood will rise, simultaneously with the renewal of Florence capital, in the area called Mattonaia (north of via dei Pilastri).

Piazza della Repubblica, 50123 Firenze FI, Italia

Museo di San Marco

To find the remains and concrete evidence of the ghetto of Florence you must visit the Museum of San Marco where, in the Cloister of San Domenico, thanks to Guido Carocci, the historical director of the museum, were placed most of the architectural fragments saved from the demolitions of the late nineteenth century in the area of the Old Market, the current Piazza della Repubblica. In the early Seventies, the fragments exhibited in the cloister were moved to other rooms in the museum and to the underground "Lapidarium". There is a section dedicated to reliefs, coats of arms, stone lintels, columns and architectural fragments with inscriptions in Hebrew.

Piazza San Marco, 3, 50121 Firenze FI, Italia

Jewish monumental cemetery

Actually, there are two Jewish cemeteries that can be visited on some Sundays of the month. The tombs found here have artistic value, but especially historical value: it is a place that lends itself to silence and recollection, but which also leads to analysing events and elaborating facts. The oldest cemetery is the one in Viale Ariosto, dated 1777, while that of Rifredi, which has about five thousand tombs, was built between 1881 and 1884. A high perimeter wall safeguard with jealous confidentiality an important cultural treasure consisting of funerary chapels and monuments, among which the one in the shape of an Egyptian pyramid, belonging to David Levi, worn out by time, but worthy of a visit to discover this suggestive place representative of the Jewish world; some of the tombs are real sculptures of high artistic value. The same styles characterize the oldest part of the Rifredi cemetery (via di Caciolle n. 13). Jewish use does not consider the exhumation of bodies except in a few specific cases. When the tombs had covered the entire area, new ground had to be found, even if human and city events often contradicted this law by forcing to transfer bodies and tombstones elsewhere. Many places have been identified as to be cemeteries in formers time. The first one, beyond the Arno, at the chiasso de ’Giudei, was replaced by a second one near the current Lungarno della Zecca, which in its turn was abandoned for others, which were created in the Porta San Frediano area. Here, in 1777, the plot of land was purchased, along the current Viale Ariosto, intended to house the new Jewish camp, still existing, even if no longer in use, to which was added, in 1884, the Rifredi cemetery, designed by architect Marco Treves.

Viale Ludovico Ariosto, 16, 50124 Firenze FI, Italia

Synagogue and Jewish Museum

The Florentine synagogue stands out with its copper green dome, becoming an integral part of the city skyline, like Giotto's bell tower that stands between the roofs of the tower of Palazzo Vecchio. This social and cultural center, as well as religious, was one of the first buildings of this kind to be built outside the ghetto, for this reason it is part of the so called "emancipation synagogues". Its interiors are marvelous, richly decorated with arabesques and mosaics, but also its garden, a place for reflection, also given by the presence of a plaque bearing the names of the Florentine Jews who disappeared in time of persecution. Built between 1874 and 1882, on a project by the architect Marco Treves, who built it on the land beaquethed by David Levi who assigned it to a Jewish place of worship. The synagogue is of Sephardic rite. The interior of the building is in Moorish style with a central layout with a median dome and lateral towers with domes on the facade. On the first and second floors there is the small, precious Jewish Museum which reconstructs the history of the Florentine Jewish community with plants, photos and objects of private and non-private worship. A particular room is designed to keep the memory of the Shoa alive. Equally interesting is the part of the exhibition which describes, through the furnishings of domestic devotion, the fundamental moments for the life of a Jew, between everyday life and religious holidays.

Via Luigi Carlo Farini, 4, 50121 Firenze FI, Italia

Auschwitz memorial

Set up in Auschwitz in 1979 and inaugurated the following spring, dismantled in 2014, it has found its place in Florence in EX3. ANED (national association of ex-deportees in Nazi camps) has prejected and created a first exhibition on the history of the memory of Italian deportation over the decades, which is now visible on the ground floor of the structure.

Viale Donato Giannotti, 81 - 85, 50126 Firenze FI, Italia

Platform 16

At Santa Maria Novella Train Station, in front of platform 16, travelers can see a striking memorial sculpture and a marble plaque, which remind us the atrocity of the Holocaust. In 1943, more than 300 people, mostly Jewish, were deported by train to the Auschwitz concentration camp. 107 people were killed on the day of arrival, only 15 survived and got back after the war.

Piazza della Stazione, 50123 Firenze FI, Italia

Anna Frank Mural

The students from Porta Romana High School of Art have created a beautiful street artwork at Anna Frank Primary School representing Anna and the pages of her diary flying away to let people know about the tragedy of Holocaust.

Via Alesso Baldovinetti, 1, 50143 Firenze FI, Italia