livius drusus
03-03-2006, 04:14 PM
Along what was once an unfashionable area of the Tiber lies the oldest continuously populated Jewish community in the world. Still known as "il Ghetto" even now that it's super chic, the neighborhood features a gorgeous synagogue and museum (http://www.museoebraico.roma.it/museo/museum.asp?Lang=eng&NavID=3&Tab=&SubSecID=50&contrast=red&Template=), which I've just found out today has been renovated from its former plainness into an unique and extensive record of over two thousand years of Jewish life in Rome.
The Gallery of Antique Marbles (http://www.museoebraico.roma.it/museo/museum.asp?Lang=eng&NavID=2&SubSecID=75&contrast=red) is completely new, and looks simply amazing.
There is an ongoing tension between culture and the Jewish presence, visible in the elegant beauty of the Hebrew lettering, and the very Roman taste for collecting pieces and slabs of marble. The collection is the testimony of their twenty-two centuries of uninterrupted presence in the city, something that makes the Jewish community very proud indeed.
[...]
There are over 100 inscriptions and architectural elements, of enormous artistic and documentary importance for the City of Rome, and naturally for its Jewish citizens. The subjects of the inscriptions vary but together they illustrate the social fabric, daily life and history of the Jewish Community and its presence in Rome. They commemorate donations from wealthy families and the purchase of cemetery plots. They forbid bringing leavened bread into areas where unleavened bread is baked and record the activities of the confraternities of charitable works. There are also family coats of arms decorating objects that the families donated to the community.
Outstanding.
:statue:
The Gallery of Antique Marbles (http://www.museoebraico.roma.it/museo/museum.asp?Lang=eng&NavID=2&SubSecID=75&contrast=red) is completely new, and looks simply amazing.
There is an ongoing tension between culture and the Jewish presence, visible in the elegant beauty of the Hebrew lettering, and the very Roman taste for collecting pieces and slabs of marble. The collection is the testimony of their twenty-two centuries of uninterrupted presence in the city, something that makes the Jewish community very proud indeed.
[...]
There are over 100 inscriptions and architectural elements, of enormous artistic and documentary importance for the City of Rome, and naturally for its Jewish citizens. The subjects of the inscriptions vary but together they illustrate the social fabric, daily life and history of the Jewish Community and its presence in Rome. They commemorate donations from wealthy families and the purchase of cemetery plots. They forbid bringing leavened bread into areas where unleavened bread is baked and record the activities of the confraternities of charitable works. There are also family coats of arms decorating objects that the families donated to the community.
Outstanding.
:statue: