The beautiful north Italian city of Ferrara has been a hub of Jewish life and culture for centuries. Join us to hear about its fascinating medieval and Renaissance history, where it became a rare beacon of sanctuary for Jews fleeing the Inquisition. In more recent times, the writer Giorgio Bassani used Ferrara as a backdrop to trace the shock-by-shock impact of the rise of fascism on the city's Jews, most famously in his novel The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. Today, it is home to a tiny, but active, community and is the base for the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah (MEIS), which tells the story of Italian Jewry, as well as Italy's experience of the Holocaust. Our guest speakers on the night will be the director of MEIS, Amedeo Spagnoletto and David Abulafia, author and emeritus professor of Mediterranean History at Cambridge University. Read more about Ferrara in the Autumn 2025 issue of JR.
Please register below to receive the Zoom link, which will be sent out a few days before the event.*
*This event begins at 7.30pm (GMT). If you booked your ticket and have not received the link by 5pm (GMT) the day before, please check your spam folder and, if it's not there, email operations@jewishrenaissance.org.uk.
Pictured: Ferrara Ghetto © Tim Berezin
Free
JR has an ethical ticketing policy and is offering free tickets to this event, but if you can afford it, please donate to support our work. We are proposing denominations of 18 – the numerical value of the Hebrew word 'chai', meaning 'life'.
