the secret garden of the ghetto

The island of Sant’Erasmo was considered to be Venice’s vegetable garden where vegetables were produced, and still are produced today, for their goodness, due to the peculiarity of the soil.

However, this was not the only vegetable garden in the city: Venice was dotted with small hidden gardens, mainly managed by religious orders, where wine and oil were produced and where one could walk among the rows of apple, peach and fig trees and the fields of aromatic herbs.

The tradition of private vegetable gardens was also widespread in the Ghetto area. In the garden behind the Levantine synagogue there is a small private vegetable garden, which remained active for centuries and served some families living in the Ghetto.

Other vegetable gardens stretched among the dense network of calli and campielli in Cannaregio, and today only traces of them remain in the toponymy: a few steps from the Ghetto Vecchio we find calle dell’Orto and Campiello dell’Orto, two places that ideally connect to the synagogues’ vegetable gardens, creating an invisible belt surrounding the Ghetto.

Behind the Spanish synagogue there was an orchard, which lasted for more than 300 years, with fig and pomegranate trees, vines for wine and olive trees, all plants with deep symbolic meaning in Jewish tradition that were also used during the main festivities.

In 2018, a secret garden with over 450 plants, trees and essences mentioned in the Old Testament was inaugurated in this refurbished space. Alongside the plant elements, an educational space for schools, a sukkah – the hut for the holiday of Sukkoth – and a fountain whose symbolism is reminiscent of the River Jordan and its tributaries have also been created.

The secret garden can be visited through the tours organised by the Jewish Museum of Venice.