Europe's most beautiful city was also home to the first Jewish ghetto in Europe. Whilst Palladio and Sansovino were building their churches, villas and palazzi, and Titian and Veronese were painting their masterpieces, the Jews of Venice, Shakespeare's fictional Shylock amongst them, were confined by night to the industrial wastelands - the word ghetto is thought to be derived from the Italian for the "foundry" on the northern outskirts of the lagoon city. Here, from 1516 until the fall of the Republic in 1797, they enjoyed a confined but paradoxically rich life.