History of the Jews in Naples

By 536, the Jewish community of Naples was sufficiently sizeable and economically established to fight with the then-resident Goths against the Byzantines.

In 1510, Spain won control of the city and expelled the Jews, but those who paid 300 ducanti were permitted to stay.

In 1831, a small group of Jews settled in the Maltese Cross Hotel where one of the rooms served as a synagogue.

In 1841, the Rothschild family, which had set up an office in Naples, acquired the Villa Pignatelli which, according to some accounts, served as the Jewish centre.

In the entrance there are two marble statues: one which remembers the community president Dario Ascarelli who bought the premises for the synagogue in 1910 and another which commemorates the deportation of Neapolitan Jews during the Second World War.