Livorno's Post-World War II Synagogue Expresses Cultural Continuity, but an Architectural Break From the Past

Livorno, Italy. Synagogue. Hand-colored engraving on paper. Ferdinando Fambrini, after Omabano Rosselli, Livorno, 1793. Also attributed to Moise del Conte. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2023.

 

Livorno, Italy. New Synagogue. Angelo di Castro, architect 1958-1962. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2004.

 

Livorno, Italy. New Synagogue. Preliminary interior concept. Angelo di Castro, architect ca. 1958. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2023.

Livorno's Post-World War II Synagogue Expresses Cultural Continuity, but an Architectural Break From the Past 

by Samuel D. Gruber

[edited 3/17/25]

In my recent post about Pitigliano I mentioned the role of another important Jewish community in Tuscany, that of Livorno (known to English travelers as Leghorn) the port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea. The history of the Jews of Livorno is unique because unlike other Jews in the 16th and 17th centuries, they were not confined to a ghetto. Livorno's Jews, because of their economic importance, were granted what was essentially political and religious autonomy within the confines of the Duchy of Tuscany.  

Livorno, as a port city, had close ties with many other centers of commerce and of Judaism throughout Europe. This was a Sephardi community, and they were closely linked with the Jews of Amsterdam and London as well as those of Venice and the Ottoman Empire.

Since the Holocaust, Jews have built only one significant synagogue in Italy - the Livorno synagogue designed by Italian Jewish architect Angelo di Castro (1962). It replaced the famous Renaissance synagogue that was badly damaged during the Second World War bombing and subsequently demolished. Built in 1591 and embellished and extended over three centuries, the earlier synagogue was considered one of the most splendid religious monuments of the European diaspora.

Livorno, Italy. Synagogue before destruction in WWII. Photo: Pinkerfeld, Synagogues of Italy.

Jewish Livorno

The Jewish community of Livorno was founded when Ferdinand I de Medici sent letters in 1593 inviting mainly Portuguese Jews to settle there and in Pisa. Ferdinand offered Jews freedom to trade and worship as well as protection from the Inquisition, and importantly at this time, no ghetto. The Ghetto of Rome had been created in 1555. The Medici wanted to develop the port of Livorno, already declared a free port in 1548, and to make nearby Pisa a trading center. 

Annie Sacerdoti in Guide to Jewish Italy writes:

“The gamble on Livorno went beyond their wildest imaginings: from an initial 114 Iberians in 1601 the Jewish population rose to 3000 and 1689, 4300 and 1784, and 5000 in 1800, an eighth of the total population. Spanish soon became the language of the community, which naturally practiced the Spanish rite. In the city, Bagitto (a mixture of Italian, Spanish, and Jewish) became the lingua franca. Jewish cooking blended with Livorno cuisine.”

The Jews mainly lived around the port, in the Main Street, via Grande or via Ferdinando, and adjoining streets.

 “The synagogue was at Trivio della Bertola. The building was demolished in 1908. This area was then redeveloped after slum clearances in the historic center. From the 16th to 18th century due to its prosperity and vitality the Livorno group was a cultural reference point for the whole western diaspora. But after being damaged by the Napoleonic blockade and having lost its status as a free port, Livorno went into decline and with it the Jewish community. From 4500 members in 1852 its numbers dropped to 2500 at the beginning of the 20th century after the Second World War deportation of 90 people, the community numbers fell to the present 600 members.” (Sacerdoti)

The Old Synagogue (Destroyed)

Livorno had a large and extremely ornate synagogue, the pride of the community and one of the most famous Jewish sites within Italy. The interior of the synagogue is well known to lovers of Jewish art as the scene of a famous oil painting of 1850, The Feast in the Rejoicing of the Law at the Synagogue in Leghorn, Italy, by the Anglo-Jewish artist Solomon Alexander Hart, now in the Jewish Museum in New York.

Solomon Alexander Hart (1806-1881), The Feast in the Rejoicing of the Law at the Synagogue in Leghorn, Italy, 1850.  The Jewish Museum, New York.

This now-destroyed synagogue was one of the first Italian synagogues I became familiar with when I began my studies of Jewish architecture.  My very first “Jewish” publication was a series of entries that described this building and some others for the catalogue of the important Gardens and Ghettos exhibition at the Jewish Museum in 1989. The catalogue is still an essential reference on Italian Jewish art and architecture. Here, I’ll just quote my younger self about the Great Synagogue of Livorno:

[The synagogue] … was expanded and remodeled many times over the centuries in response to the growing numbers and wealth of Livorno’s Jews. The synagogue was in existence before 1640, when it was expanded into adjacent houses, and it was enlarged again in 1693, when it was joined with another building and the interior was surrounded on three sides by arcades. Donors had their names inscribed on the gallery parapets.

 

In 1740 the marble ark, composed of four columns that supported a heavy scrolled and garlanded pediment, was designed by the sculptor Giovanni de Isidoro Barata of Carrara. It was installed in 1742. Barata was also commissioned to design a matching bimah, but a design by David Nunez was the one that was executed in 1743. This was a polygonal marble platform surrounded by a balustrade. In their colorful curvilinear designs, both ark and bemah recall temporary baroque furnishings.

 

In the 18th century, when earthquakes threatened the synagogue stability, Ignacio Azzi was employed to remedy the situation and to add an extra women's gallery above the existing one period work was completed in 1789. The hall measured 25.8 by 28.2 meters, with three tiers of arches surrounding the central space, which contained ark and bemah. The arcades consisted of wide bays, articulated with Tuscan columns on the ground level and ionic pilasters above. Elaborate grilles further separated the women's galleries from the central space; The interior was richly decorated, with gold lettered inscriptions on walls and ceiling.

 

The synagogue was remodeled again in 1846-48. Jewish symbols were substituted for some early decorations, and chandeliers and red curtains were added. The bemah was enlarged to accommodate a choir, and the arc was raised. Subsequent changes included new doors for the arc in the 1875 and the installation of an organ in 1903.”

 

Livorno Synagogue interior view, 1863. Print on paper.  Communita Ebraica di Livorno. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2023.

Livorno Synagogue interior view, 1863, detail. Print on paper. Communita Ebraica di Livorno. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2023.

The synagogue, which ranked with the Portuguese Synagogue (Esnoga) of Amsterdam as one of Europe’s central places of Sephardi worship, was mostly destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II and then torn down after the war.  There must have been competition between Livorno and Amsterdam about which city had the grander house of worship. Significantly, the Livorno synagogue was enlarged and redesigned in 1693, eighteen years after the grand opening of the Amsterdam synagogue. Unfortunately, because of the different circumstances of Catholic Tuscany and Protestant Holland, there was no rich tradition of representation of the Livorno synagogue in prints and paintings. Images of the Amsterdam circulated widely, and internationally, the influence of the Esnoga proved much greater

For a more detailed history of the building which went through many phases see Carol Herselle Krinsky's still excellent Synagogues of Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1985), pp. 352-354.

The New Synagogue

Remarkably the Jews of Livorno did not give up hope after the destruction of their sacred home. When the community decided to rebuild the synagogue in the 1950s, some favored reconstructing the earlier synagogue or making a simpler version, while others recognizing the War and the Holocaust as a break in history, wanted a modern building. The modernists won the debate and Jewish architect Angelo di Castro was chosen for the job.

Livorno, Italy. New Synagogue. Interior concept. Angelo di Castro, architect ca. 1958. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2023.

The choice sent a distinctive signal to post-war Europe. The stridently modern Sephardic synagogue proudly announced to the world that while Italian Jews not only still lived, prayed, and identified with their long and illustrious past, that also were looking forward.  Many aspects of the strikingly modern synagogue recalled biblical and Italian Jewish precedents, but in its materials and construction, the design it looked to the future.

There was, however, a successful compromise in the design. In 1970, an 18th-century Aron ha Kodesh from Pesaro was added as the focal point of the design, thus uniting past and present while looking ahead.  This mix of old and new has become more common. In America, my favorite examples in Michael Landau’s 1976 design for Beth Or in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Livorno, Italy. New Synagogue. Angelo di Castro, architect 1958-1962. Ark by Angelo Scoccianti (1708) originally from Cupramontana. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2004.

 

Raleigh, North Carolina, Temple Beth Or. Michael Landau, architect, 1976. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2024.

The new Livorno synagogue was opened on via del Tempio at Piazza Elia Benamozegh in 1962. Di Castro had begun his designs for the building in 1956, and a series of dynamics probably date to the period 1956-58.

Until recently the Livorno synagogue was the indisputably the most dramatic postwar European synagogue (perhaps the synagogue in Mainz, Germany now takes that title). On the outside, the new expressive structure is defined by a series of crooked concrete buttresses, which are connected by concrete walls. The buttresses appear to exert intense pressure to keep the building together.  This construction allows a large unimpeded interior sanctuary, where, as in the Renaissance predecessor, there is seating all round.

Made of reinforced concrete, the exterior was formed by a series of molded flying buttresses that broadened upwards pierced by two orders of hexagonal stained glass windows, with dark blue as the main color. At the top is a long window with red panes. The entrance portal is embellished with stylized Ten Commandments.  The two side doors are adorned with seven-branched menorahs. The monumental prayer room alludes to the image of the Mishkhan (tabernacle). The bimah stands at the center, raised on a small podium with steps and a marble balustrade, both from the previous synagogue.

The ark is set opposite and cleverly highlighted at the point where the pitched roof and pilasters form an ideal Tabernacle. Dated 1708, this baroque ark was made by the cabinet maker Angelo Scoccianti from Cupramontana in the Marches. It was brought to Livorno in 1970 from the Spanish synagogue in Pesaro, to replace the original. The arks doors are framed by two columns resting on a base and surmounted by a crown made of gilded carved wooden garlands. I do not know what was used for an ark in the intervening years from 1962-1970. 

At the side the 17th-century wooden seats are for use by the rabbi and congregational leaders. Behind them hang two parochet curtains dated 1784 and 1814. Two flights of steps behind the ark lead to the Lampronti Oratory on the lower floor. The whole area is surrounded by iron railings. The benches and the women's gallery stretch around three sides of the room. The floor has various colors, walnut and blue in the central area with the bimah and benches, white and blue around the ark.

The main sanctuary is used for major festivities, while everyday services are held in the Lampromti Oratory. This has a rectangular plan, with ark and bimah opposite each other on the long sides of the room. The 17th-century furnishings come from the Spanish synagogue in Ferrara. 

Many have found the post-War Livorno synagogue brutal in its appearance. At the time it was built, however, it was seen as a powerful assertion of Jewish perseverance and presence. What some see as ugliness should be viewed in the context of the popular postwar engineering aesthetic in Italy and in view of the widespread adoption of the post-planning principles espoused by Le Corbusier and others. In this light, de Castro’s Livorno synagogue appears expressive and almost poetic in its unusual form and subtlety-lit interior.

I have not been back to Livorno in twenty years. Writing this inspires a return visit. 

Angelo di Castro

Di Castro is an interesting figure in 20^th-century Italian design. He was already a successful modernist during the fascist period, but like all Jewish architects at the time, his career was stripped from him with the passing in 1938 of the Racial Laws that barred Jews from all occupations. Unlike some of his Jewish contemporaries who went into permanent exile, and others who faded into obscurity, di Castro was able to rebuild his career after the war. Much of his patronage came from the Jewish community, including in Livorno, but especially in his home city of Rome. In 2023, Di Castro was included in an exhibition of expelled Jewish architects mounted at MAXXI in Rome, probably the first time this episode of Italian architectural history had been examined.

Di Castro graduated from the Royal School of Architecture in Rome in 1924, and his career developed in tandem with Fascism and Italy’s modernization in the interwar period.  Most of his projects in the 1920s were residential buildings; and in the 1930s he began to submit proposals public building competitions, including those in the new Fascist town of Littorio, and for the Piazza Imperiale at the E42 exposition in what is now Rome’s EUR. The E42 competition was announced in 1938 but soon the first racial laws were published, and Di Castro was removed from the competition in second phase. That was his last work until after the war.

Unlike many Jewish colleagues Di Castro was able to resume architectural work as an architect during the busy period of post-war reconstruction, and it was during this period that his brand of modernism became increasingly expressive – and even decorative. To me, in his Livorno design and his apartment building in Rome, he seems to have been influenced by the late work of Frank Lloyd Wright. He was beginning the Livorno synagogue just as Wright’s highly-publicized Beth Shalom synagogue in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania was nearing completion.  Besides the Livorno Synagogue (1962), di Castro also built around this time the Jewish primary school on the Tiber promenade (1955-58), and he designed in 1956 with Marco Fiorentino, an apartment building in which he and many Roman Jews would live on Viale Tiziano 108.

Rome, Italy. Primary school V. Polacco on Lungotevere, 1955-58. Angelo di Castro, architect. Photo: Collezione MAXXI Architettura, Archivio di Castro. 

Rome, Italy. Primary school V. Polacco on Lungotevere, 1955-58. Angelo di Castro, architect. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2023.

Rome, Italy, Apartment house at Viale Tiziano 108. Angelo di Castro and Mario Fiorentino, architects, 1956. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2023.

Rome, Italy, Apartment house at Viale Tiziano 108. Interior detail. Angelo di Castro and Mario Fiorentino, architects, 1956. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2023.

Rome, Italy, Apartment house at Viale Tiziano 108. Funky elevator design! Angelo di Castro and Mario Fiorentino, architects, 1956. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2023.

 

 

 

A Return to Pitigliano, the "Little Jerusalem" Between Rome and Florence

Pitigliano, Italy. The synagogue juts out towards the gorge at the far left. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2025.

Pitigliano, Italy. The synagogue sits above the gorge. What we see here is all rebuilt. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2025.

 

Pitigliano, Italy. Synagogue. View of restored prayer from entrance to Aron ha-kodesh. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2025.

A Return to Pitigliano, the "Little Jerusalem" Between Rome and Florence

(updated 2/25/2025)

by Samuel D. Gruber

I've been to the Italian town of Pitigliano several times, but until last month, I had not been since 2002. On my previous visit, the late 16th-century synagogue, which had been destroyed in a landslide in the 1960s,  had been rebuilt and reopened, but the intriguing expansive underground spaces used by the Jewish community for several centuries were not yet accessible to the public. They are now, as part of the small museum "La Piccola Gerusalemme".

A few weeks ago, I revisited the town with my sister Ruth Ellen Gruber (editor of Jewish Heritage Europe), meeting up with new friends, Rabbi Mark Glickman and his wife Caron, of Calgary, Canada. It was after the Christmas-New Year holidays. The town was quiet; almost empty (we didn't know, but apparently on Tuesdays most restaurants and shops are closed). The only other visitors to the synagogue when we were there in the afternoon was an Israeli couple. In the summer, however, we were told there can be a thousand visitors a week.

Interest in Pitigliano’s Jewish history and culture began to revive in the 1980s, – largely due to the publication in 1981 of a history-based cookbook by Edda Servi Machlin, that brought international attention to the town. Machlin’s The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews: Traditional Recipes and Menus and a Memoir of a Vanished Way of Life, stimulated efforts to rebuild the synagogue for historic purposes, but also tourists – mostly Jews – began to trickle into Pitigliano, hoping to find evidence of the life and food of which Machlin wrote. This was the time of my first visit to the town sometime in the mid-1980s. Machlin’s book also includes a short memoir of her growing up Jewish in Pitigliano under Fascism. Her father was the last leader for the Jewish Community and imparted many of the communities Jewish values and traditions. Her memoir is informative and bittersweet – not like the tasty sfratti, for which Pitigliano is known. These were Jewish honey and walnut sticklike pastries made especially for Rosh Hashanah, but delicious year round. Christians adopted the pastry, too, as a special wedding treat. Rabbi Glickman bought some at the Museum shop, and these were much enjoyed. 

Pitigliano, Italy. Via Zuccarelli that leads to the synagogue is actually one of the wider streets in the town. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2025.

Pitigliano is one of the most beautiful towns in Italy, especially when seen from a distance. It is built on top of a tufa ridge between two deep gorges. Any view towards the city or from it is literally “gorgeous.” Tufa is a soft volcanic stone, the result of accumulated volcanic ash deposits. It is a soft stone that is easy to quarry and cut, but it has the admirable quality that when it is exposed to air it hardens making it also useful as building stone. Etruscan tombs and Roman catacombs are all carved out of the underlying tufa. 

Many of the tufa towns of northern Lazio and southern Tuscany like Orvieto and Pitigliano - date back at least to the Etruscan period of about 2,500 years ago. For millennia, occupants have created caves, corridors, and whole caverns within the rock, and when doing so they've used the quarried stone to build structures above. Today, in many of these towns one can explore the “underground" parts of these settlements. For centuries these spaces were not secret or exotic; they were part of everyday life and served very functional purposes. Occasionally, people lived in these spaces like troglodytes, but mostly the underground rooms were work spaces, storage spaces, and animal stalls and stables.  Some, like the matza bakery in Pitigliano, were cut deep in the rock, but were lit by rock-cut windows overlooking the gorge. Now these spaces are open to the public, but some have been reinforced with concrete for safety.

Pitigliano, Italy. Restored matza bakery. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2025.

There were Jews in Pitigliano in the late Middle Ages (and probably earlier). The community would have been small, like those throughout towns of Central Italy, where a single extended Jewish family might provide financial or medical services to the Christian community. In Italy, there were rarely Jewish farmers, but large towns had Jewish artisans, though these usually served the Jewish community. Mostly Jews in Italy were forbidden or at least restricted in these professions, especially after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, but enforcement varied greatly from town to town, and decade to decade. The smaller the number of Jews, the more likely they were to be accepted and even integrated into local (Christian) society, though tolerance and acceptance could shift quickly due to changes in politics and trends in Christian observance, especially the rise of the preaching friars (Franciscans and Dominicans) in the 14th and 15th centuries, would lead to greater Jewish isolation, and eventual ghettoization. 

Jews came to Pitigliano as refugees from Rome and elsewhere in Italy where in the mid-16th century they were being confined to ghettos under Papal order. Pope Paul IV had founded the Rome, Ancona and (short-lived) Bologna ghettos in 1555-56. All Jews living in the Papal States were forced to live in these few select places under oppressive rules. Many Jews fled papal territory. The easiest place to go was a short distance north to a small independent territory ruled by the Orsini counts, tucked just between papal ruled Lazio and the Medici-ruled Grand Dutchy of Tuscany.

In 1556, just a year after the establishment of the Rome ghetto Nicholas the 4th Orsini donated land in Pitigliano to his personal physician David de Pomis, for the creation of a Jewish cemetery. This signaled Orsini's willingness to protect the small Jewish community of Pitigliano and to allow refugees from Rome to settle. The establishment of a cemetery suggested a level of permanence that was unexpected in Italy at this time, and evidence of the growing community is that the synagogue was built in 1598.

Things changed however when the Orsini lands were added to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1608. At that time the Medici ruler opposed the Pope and had not yet fully succumbed to pressures to confine the Jewish population.  Though not the subject here, Tuscany would have a checkered history both confining and supporting Jews. The policies were mostly self-serving. Sephardi Jews were allowed great freedom in their community in Livorno because of the commercial activity and wealth they brought to the Grand Duchy, but in Florence itself in large part to appease the Pope a ghetto was established in 1571. But the Florence ghetto – unlike Rome – was more an exercise in economic exploitation than oppression and religious coercion.

La Piccola Gerusalemme

In Pitigliano Jews adapted as part of their Community Center underground spaces that for centuries would serve as a mikveh, a matza bakery, a kosher butchery, a wine storage area, and other community needs. Jews did not live in these spaces, and some – like the bakery – seem only to have been used on an annual basis. Today these spaces are united together with exhibitions in a local Jewish museum called “La Piccola Gerusalemme (the little Jerusalem), though in fact for centuries it was the many of the buildings covering a multi-block area above ground that was the actual Jewish quarter (and for a long time an official ghetto).  The museum complex is owned by the municipality of Pitigliano but operated by a private foundation that also has ties to Italian Jewish communities. 

Pitigliano, Italy. This underground housed the mikveh. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2025.

 The Synagogue

The synagogue was built in 1598 with funding from Leone de Sabato, a local Jew. The building collapsed in the 1960s and it was rebuilt in 1995 with funding from the municipality of Pitigliano. This was not the first restoration. The roof collapsed in 1757 and was rebuilt. The architecture of the reconstruction is not as detailed as the original, as can be seen in surviving photographs. It approximates the experience of the space. Restored inscriptions on the walls and some surviving inscribed marble plaques provide some of the history of the building and notable activities that have taken place there over the centuries.  There is a plaque commemorating Lt. Gino Bemporad, killed in World War I.

We cannot experience the spirit of the place, as the original furnishings, which were treated with such reverence, are now gone. But Edda Servi Machlin evokes the warmth and awe of the place when she describes her father’s process – almost a ritual – of lighting synagogue lamps before Shabbat.,

“After enjoying our delight in tasting the fresh new fruits, my father would rush to temple where, with the help of the shamash (the temple caretaker and assistant), he would prepare about 200 oil lamps that were to be lit just before Arvit, the evening prayer. There were six huge bronze chandeliers hanging from the high vault, and four standing at the four corners of the Teva (the raised platform from which the Torah is read), each holding 20 glasses filled half with water and then to the brim with oil. On the oil floated a small tin triangle with a hole at the center, and with each of its sharp corners inserted into a small piece of cork. In the hole at the center was a wick--held in place by tiny plywood disc--which fueled the flame but did not itself burn. When the supply of oil was used up, the water would extinguish the flame. The amount of oil was measured to last from 1 sundown to the next so that the lights would begin to go out soon after the Havdala (literally, separation, in Hebrew),( the ceremony at the end of Shabbat. These oil lamps, in the shiny bronze chandeliers, projected a warm, golden light which created an intimate, festive, indescribably rich atmosphere.” (p. 43)

She also describes the special arrangement of memorial lamps in the synagogue on Yom Kippur:

“The temple was decorated in white to symbolize the purity of conscience, and in addition to the usual Shabbat light to the chandeliers and the Tamid (perennial light in front of the arc of the Torah scrolls, which was kept alive by adding olive well to it every morning before Shachrit) there was one oil lamp flickering for each member of the community who had passed “to a better life” in the past few decades. The Renaissance wood panels of the western wall of the temple had a built-in shelf that ran the width of the wall, which was crowded with these oil lamps, each representing one name. During the Kol Nedarim the names were mentioned one by one, noting their relationship to the living members. All the services in Pitigliano were conducted entirely in Hebrew, including the reading of those names.” (p. 49-50)

Her account of girl’s experience of the synagogue is also telling.  She was trapped in the women’s gallery for the service, but afterwards girls and boys were social in the little piazza outside.

“Of course, during services, we were relegated to the matroneo--the dark upstairs gallery with a carved wooden baroque grate painted in gold leaf, which was reserved for women--and the boys could not see us. But as soon as the Thirteen Articles of Faith, or yigdal, a song that was sung at the end of the service, was over, we ran down to the piazzetta where we giggled and squirmed and shook hands and wished Shabbat Shalom a peaceful and wholesome Sabbath to one another before going home for dinner.” (p. 44)

 

Pitigliano, Italy. Synagogue. View of the Matroneo (women's gallery), separated by an ornate wooden grille. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2025.

Officially, the synagogue of Pitigliano, even though it is not regularly used, is today affiliated with the Jewish community of Livorno, with which the community always had ties.

In 1622, the Medici got around to instituting a ghetto in Pitigliano, too.  Despite the restrictions of a ghetto the Jewish community flourished in Pitigliano, so much so that in the 19th century about 1/4 of the town's population was Jewish, Earning the town the sobriquet - bestowed by the Jews of Livorno - of “the Little Jerusalem.” One indication of the relatively liberal attitude the Tuscan Dukes took to the Jews of Pitigliano, was the fact that the grand Duke Peter Leopold of Lorraine visited the synagogue when in the town in 1773 and he declared in his diary that the synagogue was “all gilded stucco work and well designed.” The Duke would be elected Emperor in 1790 (He was one of the most "enlightened" rulers of his time, but since his sister was Queen Marie-Antoinette of France, he was no revolutionary).

 

Pitigliano, Italy. Synagogue. Inscriptions on the read wall commemorate events in the life of the synagogue. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2025.

Pitigliano, Italy. Synagogue. View of the Matroneo (women's gallery), separated by an ornate wooden grille. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2025.

Pitigliano, Italy. Synagogue. This inscription (restored) marks the visit of Grand Duke Ferdinand III in 1823. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2025.

Subsequently, Grand Dukes Ferdinand III in 1823 and Leopold II in 1829 also visited the synagogue. These occasions are remembered with commemorative plaques. The synagogue closed permanently in 1956, and the 18th-century ark was sent to Israel where it is now in the Carmiel synagogue. During the 1990s restoration, the few parts of the original building still standing were left in brick while the rest of the reconstructed synagogue is covered with white plaster. All the furnishings are new but designed to recall the originals.

When Italy was unified in 1861, the ghetto of Pitigliano was abolished (the Rome's ghetto would not fall until 1870). Quickly, given their new freedom. many of the Jews of Pitigliano moved on to larger cities, where like many newly emancipated Jews in Italy, they rapidly entered new business ventures and within a generation established themselves in many middle-class professions.

Pitigliano, Italy. Looking out the synagogue gate. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2025.

In 1938 at the time of the fascist racial laws, about 70 Jews lived in Pitigliano. This number quickly decreased as individuals and families left seeking safety during World War II leaving about 30 Jews in the town. Life was hard between 1938 and 1943, but not life-threatening until the Italian surrender in 1943, when Germany instituted direct oppression of Italian Jews. Most of Pitigliano's Jews survived the war aided by Catholic families who hid and protected them throughout the territory. Commemorative plaques by the synagogue list the names of Italian Jewish Holocaust victims with connections to Pitigliano, and the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation has also named Pitigliano and surrounding villages a “A House ofLife,” in honor of the role of its citizens in protecting Jews under fascism and the German occupation.

The synagogue was the most visible reminder of the Jewish community until its collapse in the landslide which carried most of the building along with archives and treasured objects down the precipitous slope into the gorge below. For decades, only the imposing gate from the street remained visible, behind which was a void.  

Pitigliano, Italy. Synagogue entrance. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2025.

Pitigliano, Italy. Holocaust memorials at synagogue entrance. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2025.

 

 The synagogue was rededicated in 1995 (My sister Ruth was there at the dedication). During these years Pitigliano began to promote its Jewish history which despite the decline and disappearance of the Jewish community, was essentially a story of acceptance respect and salvation. In Pitigliano because of the bravery and generosity of Christian neighbors, it was possible to celebrate the rich cultural heritage of Italy’s Jews without having to delve too deeply into the concurrent history of Catholic anti-Semitism and the horrors of the Holocaust.