The First Ghetto: or Venetian Exlemplariness

In 1516, the Venetian ghetto was established, and the city’s Jewish population was segregated into it. This move was to redefine city life and set a blueprint for a European urban capitalist future. In The First Ghetto, Situationist Alice Becker-Ho takes a long look at the history of Venice—and its importance to cities in general—arguing that it became the heir to ancient traditions that turned it into a model commercial city whose problems we still grapple with today.

Through its examination of the four major established theories of the etymology and implications of the word ‘ghetto’, Becker-Ho’s intervention has the potential not so much to add a fifth to these, but to reduce them to one, definitive account.