The world's first ghetto

From the station I find the hotel, and then run back through the alleys to find a certain restaurant before it closes. The narrow alleys of Venice form a complex maze. They seem to have been built without any regard for parallelism; instead, each one veers in its own direction. The height of the buildings blinker you into your immediate surroundings, and only the occasional glimpse of a campanile might restore your bearings. Crossroads come as a surprise, but some streets simply lead to nowhere but the sudden water edge.

The restaurant is in Cannaregio, in the north-west of the island. Gam Gam is the only Jewish restaurant in Venice and stands next to a worn archway marking the entrance to what was the world's first ghetto. After a hearty meal, the best part of which were the latkes (potato pancakes), I venture through the arch and back in time.

Jews have been in Venice since 1385, when they were invited to the city to work as money-lenders. From 1516, they were confined by the government to this area of only two or three blocks, which at its height housed some 4000 people.

Life in the ghetto was difficult and the Jews anxiously waited for the Christians to stop preaching about the quality of mercy and actually exercise it. Not until 1797, were the gates smashed open, when Napoleon's forces arrived and granted the ghetto's inhabitants equal rights. Needless to say, history repeated itself in the twentieth century, and of the hundreds of Jews deported from Venice, only seven returned.

Nowadays the ghetto serves a different function, as an emancipated and reclaimed hub of the Jewish community. Apart from a huddle of men in traditional Ashkenazi dress, the neighbourhood is quiet. It's a far cry from the bustle of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but a walk here still brims with the memories of ancestors.