It is a little known fact that, of all the major cities in Europe, Rome is the only one that never expelled the Jews, who have lived there continuously for more than two thousand years.
Fiorentino, an engineer, urban planner and Roman Jew, introduces the armchair traveler to the site of the Roman ghetto. With exquisite photographs of the places as they are today, he takes the
area from the days of the Caesars to the present. Since the ghetto was not established until 1555, the early chapters describe the non-Jewish buildings uncovered during excavations. The
majority of the book concentrates on the early modern period of the ghetto from its beginning to the emancipation of the nineteenth century. The decimation of the Jewish community came only
with German occupation and it has since revived. Fiorentino tells his story in Italian with the passion of a proud native, occasionally merging past and present, however, the facing English
translation is stilted and contains errors. That, added to the lack of a bibliography and index, are disappointing to the reader interested in the history of the Jews of Rome. Distributed in
the US by international Publishers Marketing. Annotation 穢2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
