The Jewish Museum of Venice Reopens After Seven Years

By Jewish Compass

VENICE — The Jewish Museum of Venice reopened to the public on Thursday 22 October 2026, seven years after it closed for restoration. The inauguration was held the day before in the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo.

The museum has grown from about 1,290 square metres to more than 1,700. The work — put at about €5.5 million by the Comune di Venezia and by Artribune, though ANSA reported twelve — covered the restoration, the enlargement and the complete reordering of the collection, and reached three of the five synagogues of the Ghetto.

Three synagogues on one route

The visit now runs through the Scola Tedesca, the Scola Italiana and the Canton, all built in the sixteenth century and all standing on the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo. Conservation went to their surfaces, their furnishings and their decoration, and changed nothing about what they are: they remain places of prayer. The other two, the Levantina and the Spagnola in the Ghetto Vecchio, are visited separately.

Inside, the route opens on the ground floor with a narration across three screens and leads to a reconstructed sixteenth-century apartment. "It begins on the ground floor with an immersive narration on three screens," said Marcella Ansaldi, the museum's director. There are new rooms for the permanent collection and for temporary exhibitions, a bookshop, a library, an archive and rooms for teaching.

Daily life, not only the synagogue

The new arrangement sets out to tell the ordinary life of the Venetian Jewish community — how people lived in the Ghetto, not only how they prayed — up to the fall of the Republic in 1797. The museum was founded in 1954 by the Jewish Community of Venice and holds one of the most important collections of Jewish art and ritual silver in Italy.

David Landau led the project and raised the money for it; the interiors are by Guicciardini & Magni Architetti, and Opera Laboratori managed the work for the community and runs the museum. At the inauguration the president of the Jewish Community, Dario Calimani, the vice-president Paolo Navarro Dina and the chief rabbi of Venice, Alberto Sermoneta, spoke of memory as a duty owed to the generations now and to come. Ermelinda Damiano, the city's heritage councillor, called the reopening "a significant moment for the whole city" and said the museum should be a place where people meet, ask questions and learn what dialogue between cultures means. The Patriarch of Venice, Francesco Moraglia, and the prefect, Darco Pellos, were there.

If you are going

Campo di Ghetto Nuovo, Cannaregio 2902/B, with the ticket office at number 2882. Tickets are €18 full, €14 reduced and €11 for residents of the Comune di Venezia; the museum is open 10:00 to 18:00 and closed on Saturday and on Jewish holidays. It is not part of the Musei Civici, so the civic-museum passes do not cover it. From Santa Lucia station it is about fifteen minutes on foot over the Ponte delle Guglie; by water, the stops are Guglie and S. Marcuola-Ghetto.