The Camondo family was a prominent European family of Jewish financiers and philanthropists. History 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 non-Muslims, the family flourished as merchants in the business section at Galata on 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 1865, he relinquished his Austrian citizenship to become a national of the newly created Kingdom of Italy. In recognition of his contributions and financial assistance to the liberation of Venetia from the Austrian Empire, Abraham Salomon Camondo was created a hereditary count in 1870 by King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy. The operations of the Camondo bank reflected the transformation of the Jewish community in Constantinople and beyond it, of the Ottoman financial system. Its ledger of real estate transactions was originally held in Hebrew from 1833 to 1858, then in Italian until 1866, then in French. In 1869, Abraham Salomon Camondo's grandsons (1829–1889) and Nissim Camondo (1830–1889) to Paris, France, a city the family had previously frequented and where they had established business connections. Abraham Salomon soon followed them and died in Paris in 1873, 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 the banking business from there until their respective deaths, both in 1889, while keeping a strong link with their native Constantinople. The next generation, cousins Isaac and Moïse Camondo, both based in Paris, did not display interest in further developing the family business. The banking operations in Constantinople were closed by decision of Isaac Camondo in 1894. This family is now extinct