The epigraph etched in Latin on the ancient stone tablet was short and tender : “Claudia Aster, prisoner from Jerusalem.” Brought to Rome in chains after the quelling of the revolt in Jerusalem in 70 A.D., she was apparently the concubine of a Roman notable who wanted to give her a dignified burial and added an unusual element to the funerary stone. “I pray," it said, “take care and follow the law that no one should remove the inscription.”

That tribute is one of many revelations at the new Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah in Ferrara, and is at the heart of the museum’s first major exhibition, “Jews, an Italian Story . The First Thousand Years,” which examines the long and complex relationship between Rome and Jerusalem, Christianity and Judaism.

Jews have lived on the Italian peninsula for more than 2,000 years, one of the oldest communities in the Western Diaspora. Even before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, then the centerpiece of Judaism, and the ensuing transport and enslavement of Jewish prisoners to Rome, there had been Jews living in the city and southern provinces, where they had arrived as traders and refugees.