This museum explores the history of Venice’s Jewish community and showcases its pivotal contributions to Venetian, Italian and world history. Opened in 1955, it has a small collection of finely worked silverware and other objects used in private prayer and to decorate synagogues, as well as early books published in the Ghetto during the Renaissance.
The museum visit can be combined with a guided tour (departing hourly from 10.30am), which leads inside three of the Ghetto's synagogues: the 1528 Schola Tedesca, with a gilded, elliptical women's gallery modelled after an opera balcony; the 1531 Schola Canton, with eight charming landscapes taken from the biblical parables; and either the simple, dark-wood Schola Italiana or the still-active Schola Spagnola, with interiors attributed to Baldassare Longhena.
The museum can also arrange tours to the Antico Cimitero Israelitico on the Lido.