SYNAGOGUE

SINAGOGA
Lungotevere de’ Cenci

1901/04 Osvaldo Armanni (1855/1929) and Vincenzo Costa (active 1899/1904) in a style described as Assyrian-Babylonian

Services are celebrated with the Roman Rite and, in a room in the basement, with the Iberian rite

Interior decoration in purist style by Annibale Brugnoli (1843/1915) and Domenico Bruschi (1840/1910)

“The architects, in the absence of a established type of building for Jewish places of worship, borrowed the articulation of the architecture of the centrally planned churches, while referring to the Assyrian-Babylonian figurative tradition for the decoration (...). The elements of ancient Mesopotamia are reviewed in the light of a renewed sensitivity in ‘liberty’ style” (Giorgio Muratore)

JEWISH MUSEUM
Permanent exhibition of objects continuously used by the Roman Jewish community
Six rooms divided into three sections: historical, ceremonial objects and fabrics
Among the objects visible here there are about 400 silver pieces, 900 pieces of fabric, 100 marble pieces, as well as casts, documents and scrolls

Jewish people were living in Rome since at least the second century BC
Paul IV (1555/59) established the ROME GHETTO called “Serraglio degli Ebrei” (Menagerie of Jews) in 1555 with the bull Cum Nimis absurdum and revoked all the rights granted to the Jewish of Rome
This area was chosen because the Jewish community, who lived in antiquity in the area of the Aventine Hill, and especially in the Trastevere neighborhood, lived here at the time and it was the majority of the population of the area itself
It was built 40 years after the Venice Ghetto, which was the world's first

In the ghetto there were five synagogues or “scole”, according to the place of origin and the rite of visitors:

The Scola Tempio (Temple School) for local Jews

The Scola Nuova (New School) for those who came from small towns in Lazio

The Scola Siciliana (Sicilian School) for the Jewish refugees from southern Italy

The Scola Catalana (Catalan School) and the Scola Castigliana (Castilian School) for the Spanish

In 1848, finally, Pius IX Mastai-Ferretti (1846/78) tore down the wall, but the Jews, however, remained segregated until 1870 when they were declared equal to other citizens by King Victor Emmanuel II
The first cannon shot during the assault on the breach of Porta Pia was shot by a Jewish officer from Turin

The Roman Jewish are about 16,000, nearly half of the population of Jewish in all of Italy consisting of about 36,000 people
When the state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948 some Roman Jewish symbolically passed under the Arch of Titus, the destroyer of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 AD, something Jewish people had not done for many centuries