House of Camondo

The Camondo family was a prominent European family of Jewish financiers and philanthropists.

Part of the Sephardic community in Spain, the Camondo family settled in Venice after the 1492 Spanish decree that ordered the expulsion of all Jews who refused conversion to Catholicism. There, some of its members became famous for their scholarship and for the services which they rendered to their adopted country. Following the Austrian takeover of Venice in 1798, members of the Camondo family established themselves in Istanbul. Despite the many restrictions and sumptuary laws imposed on all minorities, the family flourished as merchants in the business section at Galata at the outskirts of the city. They branched into finance in 1802 with the founding of their own bank, Isaac Camondo & Cie. On Isaac's death in 1832 his brother Abraham Salomon Camondo inherited the bank. He prospered greatly and became the prime banker to the Ottoman Empire until the founding of the Imperial Ottoman Bank in 1863. In 1866, the year Venice became part of Italy after a peace treaty ended the Austro-Prussian War, Abraham Salomon Camondo's son Raphaël died. In 1869, the eighty-six-year-old patriarch followed his grandsons Behor Abraham Camondo and Nissim de Camondo to Paris, France, a city the family had previously frequented and where they had established business connections. In recognition of his contributions and financial assistance to the liberation of Venetia from the Austrian Empire, in 1870 Abraham Salomon Camondo was created a hereditary count by King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy. Abraham died three years later in Paris but in accordance with his wishes his remains were returned to Istanbul for burial there in the Jewish cemetery at Hasköy, a neighbourhood on the Golden Horn in Istanbul. His two grandsons remained in Paris and continued to successfully expand their banking business.