Italy · Emilia-Romagna · Bologna
Ghetto, Bologna — Area Guide & Where to Stay
The Ghetto is Bologna's historic Jewish quarter, a knot of narrow medieval lanes in the Historic Centre a few steps from the Two Towers. Jews were confined here from 1556. Its spine is Via dell'Inferno, the cramped street the enclosure grew around, still lined by tall overhanging houses. The quarter is small and easy to cross on foot.
About Ghetto
Where to stay in Ghetto
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Staying in the Ghetto puts you inside Bologna's oldest core, within a few minutes' walk of the Two Towers and the porticoed shopping streets. The quarter itself is tiny, so hotel rooms are scarce; most beds sit in the surrounding Historic Centre rather than on its inner lanes. Choose it for quiet medieval streetscape and proximity to the Jewish Museum of Bologna on Via Valdonica.
Evenings are calm here. For a larger choice of hotels, look to the wider streets around Via Zamboni and the rest of Bologna's centre.
About Ghetto
What are the main landmarks in Ghetto?
The Jewish Museum of Bologna anchors the quarter, set in the sixteenth-century Palazzo Pannolini on Via Valdonica, where two rooms trace Jewish life across Bologna and Emilia-Romagna from the Middle Ages onward. The Two Towers rise just beyond its southern edge. Via dell'Inferno, the main lane, carries a plaque marking the site of the ghetto's synagogue.
One old gate survives. It spans Via del Carro as a low vaulted passage.
What is the history of Ghetto?
Bologna's ghetto was created after the papal bull Cum nimis absurdum, issued by Pope Paul IV in 1555. The city's Jews were confined here from 1556, behind gates that were locked each night. Expulsion came in 1569.
The community returned in 1586, then scattered for good after a final expulsion in 1593. For centuries afterward these lanes stayed an ordinary working corner of Bologna, their gates long gone but their cramped medieval plan intact.
Where is Ghetto?
The quarter fills a triangle of streets on the northeast edge of Bologna's Historic Centre, bounded by Via Zamboni, Via Marsala, and Via Guglielmo Oberdan. Via dell'Inferno runs down the middle as its main lane. Southward, Via Zamboni carries toward the Two Towers, while the wider area belongs to the Santo Stefano quarter.
The streets are short and tightly packed. One of the old ghetto gates survives as a vaulted passage at the corner of Via del Carro and Via Zamboni.
More areas in Bologna
Updated July 2026