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

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 has been created in 1555. The Medici wanted to develop the port of Livorno, already declared a freeport 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 it is 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 synagogue 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 arc 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.

That 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. 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.

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.

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 Cupramontana in the Marche Region 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/

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 a recent 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 synagogue in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania was nearing completion.  Besides the Livorno Synagogue (1962), di Castro also built at this time the Jewish primary school on the Tiber promenade (1955-58), and with Marco Fiorentino in 1956, 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 Fiorentinno, architects, 1956. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2023.

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

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

The new Livorno synagogue was opened at 1 Via Benamozegh (formerly via del Tempio) in 1962. Di Castro had begun his designs for the building in 1956, as can be seen in a dynamic watercolor rendering from that year.

Until recently the Livorno synagogue was the indisputably the most dramatic postwar European synagogue (perhaps the synagogue in Mainz, Germany now take 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 Scotia anti 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. Made of gilded wood

At the side the 17th-century wooden seats are for use by the rabbi. Behind them hang two parochet curtains for the ark dated 1784 and 1814. They hang against the balustrades of the two flights of steps, behind the arc, leading to the Lampronti Oratory on the lower floor. The whole area is circumscribed by rock 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 synagogue is used for major festivities, while everyday services are held in the Lampromti Oratory. The Spanish rite Lampronti has a rectangular plan, and the ark and bimah opposite each other on the long sides of the room period the 17th century furnishings come from the Spanish temple and via Victoria, Ferrara. The polychrome marble ark has 2 doors decorated with stylistic between 2 dark columns set on a base and supporting a curved architrave. The bimah is also made of polychrome marble and is enclosed by railings with small columns bearing 6 white ornamental amphorae. In the same architectural style, the building annex to the synagogue hosts the community offices, library, and archives.

Many have found the building 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.