Jewish Museum of Rome

The Jewish Museum of Rome occupies the basement of the Great Synagogue in Rome's former ghetto district and traces one of the world's oldest continuous Jewish communities, whose presence in the city dates back to the second century BCE. The collection spans Torah ark curtains, silverwork, embroidered textiles, and liturgical objects that chart over two millennia of unbroken religious life. The Great Synagogue above, completed in 1904 in an Assyrian-Babylonian Art Nouveau style, is itself a national monument and one of Rome's most architecturally distinctive buildings — a deliberate statement of Jewish visibility in the Italian capital. A museum ticket includes a guided tour of both the Great Synagogue and the smaller Spanish Synagogue within the same complex. Note that the museum is closed on Saturdays in observance of Shabbat, and on numerous Jewish holidays throughout the year.