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[00:00.40]Jews who stayed in Venice for more than two weeks were supposed to wear a yellow "O" on their backs or a yellow hat
[00:08.29]And they were confined to a special area which became known as the Ghetto Nuovo
[00:16.05]This is the entrance to the Jewish ghetto in Venice where Jews were obliged to live and indeed confined at night
[00:22.96]Jews were tolerated in Venice, but for a reason
[00:28.82]The key was that Jews could provide a service that Christian merchants were forbidden to do
[00:34.77]They could charge interest on their loans
[00:37.85]Fibonacci might have figured out the mathematics of lending
[00:41.42]but it took Shylock to do the deal
[00:47.33]This is where the Venetian Jews used to do business
[00:50.37]This building here was the old Banco Rosso
[00:52.55]and it was outside here that they used to sit behind their tables - their tavole
[00:58.19]on their benches - their banchi, the root of the Italian word for banks
[01:02.95]Now, there was good reason why merchants came here to the Jewish Ghetto to borrow money
[01:08.21]For Christians, what the Jews were doing, lending money at interest, was a sin
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