GHETTO. - A quarter in which Jews were obliged to live, as distinct from the quarters in which Jews in certain cities concentrated of their own free will in order to live peacefully according to their ancestral customs. The ghettos were enclosed by a wall and provided with a gate that remained closed at night.
Free separation was favored by various councils, beginning with that of Narbonne in the year 1050. The Jewish settlement was to be located, as far as possible, far from the churches. Paul IV in 1555 assigned to the Jews of Rome and of the other cities of the Papal State separate quarters. The designation "g." for Rome occurs for the first time in a papal bull of 1562. In 1516 the ghetto of Venice arose, but a separate Jewish quarter, albeit without the designation "g.", existed in Turin already in the first half of the 15th century. Not always and not everywhere were the Jews displeased with the ghetto. Emancipation brought with it the abolition of the ghetto. In Rome the ghetto remained until 1870.
The most commonly used Hebrew equivalent to indicate the ghetto was hásér. Erroneous are the derivations of the word g. from the Hebrew géth, "divorce," "repudiation"; from (Bor)ghetto; from the vernacular guetto (filthy); from the Greek γέτζαν; from the Gothic gatvo (street, Gasse); but the derivation from "getto" also presents difficulties, inasmuch as in the Venetian dialect one would have had "zetto," on the model of giudecca-zudeca, zudio etc. The English gate should be taken into consideration, since the gate closed at night and the guard constituted the true characteristic of the ghetto.
Bibliography2 works
Eugenio Zolli