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