A major exhibit opening June 20 at the Bologna Jewish Museum will focus on the city’s “lost” medieval Jewish cemetery: it was destroyed in 1569 by order of Pope Pius V and was rediscovered during excavations in 2012-2014.
Archaeologists uncovered 408 burials of men, women, and children, arranged in rows, during the excavations (carried out originally in relation to the construction of a residential complex). Since then, the cemetery has been the focus of research by academic institutions with the cooperation of the Bologna Jewish community. (The recovered skeletal remains were given a Jewish reburial supervised by Bologna’s chief rabbi.)
Called La Casa della Vita: Ori e Storie intorno all’antico cimitero ebraico di Bologna— (The House of Life: Gold and Stories around the ancient Jewish cemetery of Bologna), the exhibit features material found in the graves — including gold, silver, and bronze jewelry incorporating gemstones and amber, as well as other precious artifacts, using them to tell the story of medieval Jewish life in the city.
It was curated and organized by the Bologna Jewish Museum and the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for Bologna and the provinces of Modena, Reggio Emilia and Ferrara, in collaboration with the Jewish Community of Bologna.
A description of the exhibition states:
Gold jewels of exceptional workmanship and beauty, engraved stones, bronze objects recovered in more than four hundred burials, attest to the presence in Bologna of a thriving community profitably inserted in the urban and social context until the emanation of two Papal Bulls condemned it to abandon the cities of the Papal States and to be erased from the memory of the places where they had lived and worked. These findings, finally visible after years of studies and restorations, are the protagonists of the exhibition “The House of Life. […] The exhibition, open from 20 June 2019 to 6 January 2020, allows us to retrace, in a global and systematic way, the history of a minority, its uses, its culture and its interactions with the Christian society of the time.
The discovery of the cemetery was hailed as a major event and “an enrichment of the cultural story of our city and of the presence of the Jewish community in Bologna” that was a “unique opportunity for study and research.”
According to archival sources, the area of the Bologna cemetery (located an area near the Cloister of San Pietro Martire bounded by Via Orfeo, Via de’ Buttieri, Via Borgolocchi and Via Santo Stefano) was purchased by a Jew in 1393 and presented to the Bologna Jewish community for use as a burial ground.
It functioned until 1569, when Pope Pius V banished all Jews from everywhere in the Papal States except Rome and Ancona.
On November 28, 1569 he presented the cemetery to the nuns of San Pietro Martire and gave them permission “to dig up and send, wherever they want, the bodies, bones and remains of the dead: to demolish, or convert to other forms, the graves built by the Jews, including those made for living people: to remove completely, or scrape off the inscriptions or epitaphs carved in the marble.”
The cemetery was obliterated, and the site was used for other purposes — though it was still remembered as the “Jewish garden.”
The four monumental 16th-century tombstones featuring intricate carved decoration and complex poetic inscriptions that are now displayed at the Bologna’s Civic Medieval Museum are believed to be the only surviving grave markers from the cemetery. Two of these tombstones were re-purposed to mark Christian graves.
Jewish history in Bologna dates back many centuries, but until the excavations in 2012-14 revealed the cemetery, the gravestones in the museum were among the few tangible remnant of Jewish life in Bologna from before the expulsion.
The “House of Life” exhibit runs until January 6, 2020 and takes places within the framework of events marking the 20th anniversary of the Bologna Jewish Museum.
Throughout the period of the exhibition, other museums and cultural institutions in Bologna will be scheduling events, including guided tours of the former ghetto, related to the city’s Jewish history. They include the Civic Medieval Museum, the University Library, the International Music Museum, the Museum of Industrial Heritage, and the Civic Risorgimento Museum.
In addition, a new 160-page book on the cemetery has been published: Il Cimitero ebraico medievale di Bologna: un percorso tra memoria e valorizzazione, edited by Renata Curina and Valentina Di Stefano.
MEB – Museo Ebraico di Bologna (Jewish Museum of Bologna)
via Valdonica 1/5
40126 Bologna (Italy)
Tel. +39 051.2911280 – Fax +39 051.235430 – info@museoebraicobo.it – http://www.museoebraicobo.it/it
The exhibit runs from June 20, 2019 to January 6, 2020, Sunday to Thursday from 10 a.m.- 17:30; Friday from 10-15:30. Closed Saturdays and Jewish holidays.
Tickets € 7.00 | € 5.00 (reduced)
Click to read official material about the discovery of the cemetery, in English
Click to read our JHE article on the discovery of the cemetery
Click to read our JHE article about the four surviving tombstones from the cemetery
Click to read description of the exhibition (in Italian)
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