The Ghetto and Tiber Island
Roman ruins woven into a working quarter, kosher bakeries, and the oldest bridge in the city. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Portico d'Ottavia
Start at the ancient gateway, half-ruined, with a medieval church grafted into its columns and a fishmarket once held under its arches. The layers here — Roman, medieval, modern — stack right on top of each other. Read the plaques; this was the edge of the walled ghetto.

2. Via del Portico d'Ottavia
The spine of the quarter. Walk it slowly past the kosher bakeries and *forni* — the *pizza ebraica*, a dense burnt-edged fruit-and-nut slab, is the thing to try, sold by the heavy piece. Buy one and eat it walking.

3. Great Synagogue of Rome
The squared-off dome on the riverbank, built in 1904, a generation after the ghetto was abolished and its walls came down. The Jewish Museum beneath it tells the quarter's long, hard story; even from outside, the building's defiance is the point.

4. Fontana delle Tartarughe
Detour two minutes north to Piazza Mattei for the small turtle fountain — four boys hoisting four turtles into the upper basin, the turtles added by Bernini a generation later. The most quietly perfect fountain in the city; go even if you double back.

5. Ponte Fabricio
Cross to the island on the oldest bridge in Rome still in use — built in 62 BC and barely altered since. Pause halfway; the worn travertine under your hand is genuinely two thousand years old.

6. Isola Tiberina
The boat-shaped island, long a place of healing — a temple to Asclepius once, the Fatebenefratelli hospital now. Walk down to the prow and the weir, where the Tiber breaks white. End here, with the river on both sides of you.

The Ghetto and Tiber Island