Abstract

This article aims at analyzing the relation between what „ghetto“ signifies beginning in the Christian Middle Age (the Jewish Quarter) up to the modern time (the Cen- tral-European Jewish Ghetto, the West-European labor district, the Afro-American neighborhood of North-Ameri- can cities ) and what the “closed area” (any kind of district situated in a contemporary metropolis) signifies. I have tried to analyze this relation in its evolution, ap- proaching both the continuity, the similarity of original types of ghettoes to contemporary ones, and the dis- continuity, the differences existing between the two types of ghetto. The segregation and self-isolation poli- cies define and differentiate the ghetto in its essence. Starting from a contemporary point of view, I try to analyze the ghetto from a theoretical perspective, and from an architectural point of view