Jewish routes

The city of Trieste is home to an ancient and important Jewish community. It has witnessed and has often been the centre of key events throughout Jewish history. In particular during the twentieth century, where the Jewish community in Trieste tragically experienced at first hand the racism of three European totalitarian regimes: firstly, on 18th September 1938, the first of Italy’s racial fascist laws were introduced; it then became the location of the only Nazi concentration camp in Italy and finally welcomed and helped many Jews, who reached Trieste from Eastern Europe, to sail to Israel.
 

• The Synagogue
• Jewish community museum "Carlo and Vera Wagner"
• The Ghetto
• City museum Risiera of St. Sabba
• The cemetery

The Friuli Venezia Giulia region retains many traces of the Jewish presence from over the centuries. An example is ancient Aquileia, where the testimonies, that are nowadays housed in the Museo Paleocristiano, date back to the first centuries of Christianity. Elsewhere, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Cividale houses headstones retrieved from the ancient cemetery and dated to the modern era, while in San Daniele del Friuli there is still a Jewish cemetery, which opened in 1734. Even Gradisca d’Isonzo, in the province of Gorizia, retains a small cemetery from the late eighteenth century. It was from this period, in mainly the eastern part of the region, under Habsburg rule, that Jewish communities were established, often due to their expulsion from the Venetian Republic, to which most of the western area of Friuli belongs.

In Gorizia, the Jewish Quarter was a thriving economic and commercial hub but simultaneously a residential area with a religious hearth. The synagogue, no longer used for worship, houses the museum Piccola Gerusalemme sull’Isonzo dedicated to the history of Judaism in Gorizia.