The "Campiello" is part of a block outside the Venetian walls to which the buildings along via Monache are attached. It is an area of poor construction that, in the city's memory, is remembered as the "Ghetto of the Jews," where the city's Jewish community was confined between 1665 and 1770.
The area overlooks the small square of San Martino, characterized by the beautiful facade of San Michele, attributed to Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548 – 1616) and the seventeenth-century Palazzo Barbarigo. On the other side, the little building on the canal shows traces of two arches, long bricked up, a testament to the porticoed path that was used to reach the landing place.
From historical maps, the role of the area in the progressive urbanization of the southeast corner of the historic city is evident: from "campiello" at the urban edge at the end of the 1500s to a crossroads of streets and a landing on the Bisatto two centuries later.
The presence of the Jewish community in Este is documented starting from 1406, but it is with a ducal bull from 1665 that they were required “to live together in the Houses of the heirs Botti, [...] located in the contrà of S. Martino,” in a neighborhood squeezed between the walls and the embankment of the Bisatto, equipped with a closure door and lacking openings to the outside.
After the disappearance of the Jews from Este (presumably in the Napoleonic era), the area and the “granaroni” of via Vallesina were occupied by citizens of very low social condition, so much so that that part of the city is still remembered today as the “ghetto of misery.”
The Campiello area at the beginning of the 1700s consists of a building with the main front facing piazzetta San Martino and three row houses attached to it, which have their main facade facing the bank of the canal and the back on the internal “campiello.” Whether these buildings were part of the “Ghetto” in the second half of the 1600s is undocumented. The direct access from the square or from the bank of the canal, the open-forometric arrangement towards the outside, and the presence of the small port make one think of commercial-residential type buildings. The Ghetto probably coincided with the more internal constructions and a single access, from piazzetta S. Martino or from the narrow street along the canal embankment.
The part of the empty buildings of the “Ghetto” overlooking piazzetta S. Martino collapsed in the spring of 1976. The following day, to “eliminate any danger to public safety,” the entire main building and part of the adjacent ones on the bank of the canal were demolished.
