The Roman (Jewish) Ghetto (Italian: Ghetto di Roma) was located in the rione Sant'Angelo, in the area surrounded by today's Via delPortico d'Ottavia, Lungotevere dei Cenci, Via del Progresso and Via di Santa Maria del Pianto close to the Tiber and the Theater of Marcellus, in Rome, Italy.
Papal bull Cum nimis absurdum, promulgated by Pope Paul IV in 1555 segregated the Jews, who had lived freely in Rome since Antiquity, in a walled quarter with three gates that were locked at night, and subjected them to various restrictions on their personal freedoms such as limits to allowed professions and compulsory Catholic sermons on the Jewish shabbat.
The measures contained in Paul IV's bull, including the establishment of the Roman Ghetto, had the explicit objectives of segregating the Jewish population of the city from the Christian majority, both spatially and legally, and of placing the former on a level of legal and social inferiority with respect to the latter. However, the ghetto was welcome to some Jews who thought that its walls served also to protect the small Jewish community from the possible attacks of Christian mobs and from the drain which must follow from assimilation to the majority, at the same time enabling special religious customs to be observed without interference[1].
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