High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Venetian Ghetto was the area of Venice in which Jews were compelled to live under the Venetian Republic. It is from its name, in the Venetian language, that the word "ghetto", used in many languages, is derived. The name is derived from the "campo gheto" an area that iron foundries located there in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries used for cooling slag (Venetian "gheta"; Italian "ghetta"; from Latin GLITTU[M], GLITTUS).