Ghetto (get'o) The, the Jewish quarter of large cities. The term arose in Italy in connection with the Jewish quarters in the cities of Lombardy and other parts of Italy. In the medieval towns the Jews were compelled to live apart from the Christians. At Cordova the Moslems drove "dogs and Jews" to live outside the city walls. The famous ghetto of Rome was destroyed in 1885 to make room for a new embankment along the Tiber. The largest and most populous ghetto in the world is a down town tenement quarter in New York City. Over a third of a million Hebrew people are packed into houses, many of them unfit for occupancy. They eke out a living largely by working on readymade clothing by the piece.