“The Most Serene Republic, not only disposed to favour and sustain its poor, to human and national advantage, but moved by the impulse of her own charity, among other benign measures and from her exemplary compassion for the needy, also provided and imposed on the Jews that there be opened three banks in order to assist with the needs and emergencies of the poorest unfortunates, at a yearly interest of only five percent” wrote Simone Luzzatto in his 1638 Discorso circa il stato de gl’Hebrei.
In the Ghetto Nuovo banks, reduced, as he says, to only three by the end of the 16th century, and named the Red, the Green and the Black banks (from the colour of their signs, matching that of the receipts they issued) the greater part of the loans were guaranteed by objects handed over as security,
The banks were situated on the ground floor of buildings on three different sides of the square, in positions that perhaps allowed in cer tain circumstances an approach from the canal side (these would have been the only water access points to the Ghetto enclosure). The shelves for the storage of deposited objects were on the first floor, for security reasons.
Incidentally, notwithstanding suggestions to the contrary, the expression “andar in rosso” (‘go into the red’), indicating going into debt, has nothing to do with the Ghetto’s Red Bank, whose operations were the same as those of the other coloured banks.
Today, only trace of the Red Bank remains in the inscription on the lintel of the entrance door.
