(JTA) Respected art historian Daniele Di Castro, the director of the Jewish Museum of Rome, died last Friday following a long battle with cancer.

Born in Rome in 1958, Di Castro revamped the Jewish community’s museum in the mid-2000s and turned it into the city’s leading Jewish cultural institution. Tributes poured in from political and cultural leaders, as well as from the Jewish community. “She was a person of great kindness of spirit, profoundly rooted in Jewish culture, and capable of an authentic opening to dialogue with the entire city,” said Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno.