Kosher Butcher

The Kosher Butcher, again carved out of the tufo rock. Luckily, this isn’t all underground, if you happen to be a bit claustrophobic.

What you can see in the above picture is the slaughterhouse. The ghetto‘s butcher’s used to take the animals down here to kill them according to Kosher rules.

The meat would then be brought above ground to be sold to those in the Jewish community and sometimes even enterprising locals from the rest of Pitigliano who knew how good the meat was.

Historians believe the butcher was built around the same time as the rest of the ghetto, 16th century, and was carved into the tufo rock because of lack of space.

Pitigliano is famous for its tight and winding alleys, and the ghetto, while quaint, was originally very small, so locals had to do everything they could to maximise the space they had.