The Rialto Ghetto & Renaissance Venice Walk
Venice, Italy
Explore Venice’s Rialto district, where trade, credit, and finance once powered the city’s wealth. The walk traces the origins of the Venetian Ghetto, established in 1516, and the system of controlled segregation that shaped Jewish life in Venice. Along the way, sites like Palazzo dei Camerlenghi, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, and Sotoportego de Calle de la Madonna reveal both the machinery of commerce and the dense urban world of the ghetto.
The stops
- 01 Palazzo dei Camerlenghi
Palazzo dei Camerlenghi is a Renaissance palazzo in Venice, northern Italy, located in the sestiere (quarter) of San Polo. It faces the Canal Grande, adjacent to the Rialto Bridge.
- 02 Ponte di Rialto
Crossing the Grand Canal here recalls the commercial arteries that connected banking, lending, and the movement of goods that defined Venice’s economic life.
- 03 Fondaco dei Tedeschi
A major mercantile warehouse and trading house that illuminates the broader economy of Venice, including the credit, exchange, and foreign commerce environment in which Jewish moneylending mattered.
- 04 Palazzo Mocenigo (San Marco)
The Palazzo Mocenigo detto "il Nero" is a palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. Other Palazzi Mocenigo on each side include the Palazzo Mocenigo Casa Nuova and the Palazzo Mocenigo Casa Vecchia.
- 05 Palazzo Dandolo Paolucci
Palazzo Dandolo Paolucci is a Renaissance palace in Venice, Italy, located in the San Polo district and overlooking the Grand Canal. The palazzo neighbors Palazzo Dolfin and Palazzo Civran Grimani.
- 06 Palazzo Giustinian Persico
The Palazzo Giustinian Persico is an early-Renaissance-style palace located at the corner with the Rio di San Tomà, near Palazzo Tiepolo and across the canal from Palazzi Mocenigo on the Grand Canal, in the Sestiere of San Polo, Venice,…
- 07 Palazzo Tiepolo
The Palazzo Tiepolo is a historic Renaissance-style palace located between the Palazzo Soranzo Pisani and the Palazzo Pisani Moretta on the Grand Canal, in the Sestieri of San Polo, Venice, Italy.
- 08 Sotoportego de Calle de la Madonna
A useful ghetto-area passageway that helps visitors sense the tight urban fabric of Venice’s Jewish quarter. Its narrow scale supports the tour’s themes of segregation, circulation, and dense residential life.
- 09 Il Gobbo di Rialto
Il Gobbo di Rialto is a marble statue of a hunchback found opposite the Church of San Giacomo di Rialto at the end of the Rialto in Venice.
The narration at every stop is in the app — this is the map of where it takes you, with a line on each stop.
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Walk The Rialto Ghetto & Renaissance Venice Walk with a voice in your ear.
Download Odyssey Guide on iPhone to start this walk.
Download on the App StoreiPhone · iOS 16 and later