Museum
Museo Ebraico di Bologna
Renaissance palazzo tracing millennia of Jewish history beside the vanished walled ghetto.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Museo Ebraico di Bologna traces the 1482 printing of a complete vowelled Hebrew Pentateuch, produced in a rented Bologna workshop by former dyer and bookbinder Abraham ben Hayyim and financed by the merchant Joseph ben Abraham Caravita. It follows the technical puzzle Abraham had to solve, casting Hebrew's tiny vowel and chant marks in metal type where every earlier printer had failed, and meets Yosef Hayyim ben Aaron, whose blessing closes the volume. The museum's rooms sit beside the old Jewish quarter where that workshop once stood, decades before Bologna's walled ghetto rose around it.
This audio guide was created using AI.