Hotels near The Venetian Ghetto

The Venetian Republic confined the city's Jewish population to this island on 29 March 1516, and the word ghetto went into every European language from here. A census in 1555 counted 923 Jews living on it. The site could not spread sideways, so it went upwards: the houses around Campo di Ghetto Nuovo run to six and seven low-ceilinged floors, unusually tall for Venice. Five synagogues were built above shop and living level and are close to invisible from the square unless you know which run of windows to read.

Carnival barely reaches this far north. Cannaregio's contribution to the programme is the opening weekend's Festa Veneziana sull'acqua, a rowed parade of decorated boats along the Rio di Cannaregio about 600 metres south of the campo, and for those two evenings the Fondamenta di Cannaregio is genuinely full. Outside them the district behaves like somewhere people live. Bars serve residents, the campo empties by mid-afternoon, and nobody is selling you a plastic mask.

The price of that quiet is that some of it is shut. The Museo Ebraico is running from a temporary location while its Campo di Ghetto Nuovo building is restored, it opens 10:00 to 17:30 on Monday to Wednesday, Friday and Sunday and 11:00 to 18:30 on Thursday, and it closes on Saturdays and Jewish holidays with no exceptions for Carnival. Walking the campo and reading the Holocaust memorial reliefs on its north wall costs nothing at any hour.

Pro Tip: Watch the Festa Veneziana sull'acqua from Ponte dei Tre Archi at the western end of the Rio di Cannaregio, not from Ponte delle Guglie. Guglie is where the vaporetto crowd stops; Tre Archi is 400 metres further along and the boats pass just as close.