Jewish Cemetery: Attraction informations

Visiting the Jewish Cemetery in Ferrara is a whole adventure. Form the outside it is difficult to imagine the vastity of its green grass field, extending itself from behind the closed gate on the main street, and approval from a guardian is needed to enter it.

The cemetery sits on an area traditionally called the vegetable garden of the Jews and has always been a place dedicated to the dead, behind the Certosa di Ferrara (the main church is currently closed to the public because of the damages caused during the earthquake in 2012).

Its location has remained the same since the 18th century so it is easy to see overlapping levels of gravestones from different periods, although some of the older ones were destroyed by the Inquisition, leaving large portions of green field, that are nowadays completely empty.

Many of the older gravestones have been subsequently used in the decoration of several monuments throughout the city, for example, the two equestrian statues that stand at the entrance of the Palazzo del Comune. With a closer look, it is easy to see both statues stand on 2 pillars decorated with gravestones from the cemetery. The oldest gravestones inside the cemetery belong to the 19th century.

The main entrance to the Jewish Cemetery of Ferrara is a gate built in 1911 by Ciro Contini. Despite its huge dimensions, the cemetery located in via delle Vigne was not the only Jewish cemetery in the city, we can in fact find smaller ones around Ferrara.

Illustrious figures buried in the cemetery. Giorgio Bassani

Several illustrious characters from the Jewish Ferrara are buried in this cemetery. Among them the famous writer Giorgio Bassani, whose tomb is placed at the opposite side of the main entrance of the cemetery.

His resting place is very simple, as wanted by the Jewish doctrine, and covered with stones instead of flowers, as a sign of respect following the Jewish tradition.

Giorgio Bassani was born in Bologna at the beginning of the 20th century to a wealthy Jewish family. He studied at the University of Bologna and published his first work in 1940 before becoming a clandestine political activist.

After a period of imprisonment in Ferrara, he married and moved to Rome, where he would stay for the rest of his life. After the war, he published many other works and wrote some screenplays with famous directors like Luchino Visconti and Florestano Vancini, who directed another of his tales, Una notte del ‘43.

He was the distinguished president of Italia Nostra, one of the first environmental associations in Italy. After his death, in 2000, he was buried in the Jewish Cemetery. His last wishes were to rest in his natal city, in the place where he was born and which he helped restore during his years in Italia Nostra.

He now rests under the shadow of Ferrara’s walls.

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