Jewish Community of Rome

The Historical Archive of the Jewish Community of Rome (ASCER) “Giancarlo Spizzichino” is considered one of the most important archives in Europe for what concerns history of the Jews and, in 1981, it has been declared of “significant historical interest” by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage.

The ASCER contains mainly documents related to the period between the beginning of the sixteenth century and the end of the nineties of the twentieth century, for a total of 284 linear meters (more than 375 folders, 6,930 files and 1,555 registers).

Materials, according to the latest regulation carried out in 1963 by Daniele Carpi, are divided into two sections:

• Medieval and Modern Archives (16th-19th century), 80% rearranged under the guidance of the Superintendence for the Archival Heritage in Lazio by Silvia Haia Antonucci, Claudio Procaccia and Giancarlo Spizzichino, including documents concerning history of the Israeli University of Rome in the ghetto, or the Cinque Scole, the Confraternities, relations with the Papal State including the Jus Gazagà, the loan against interest, forced baptisms and the Casa dei Catecumeni, restrictions on the possession of Jewish books, harassment during the Catholic celebrations;
• Contemporary archive (19th-20th century) 100% reorganized under the guidance of the Superintendence for the Archival Heritage in Lazio by Silvia Haia Antonucci, Claudio Procaccia and Giancarlo Spizzichino, including material related to legislation, the construction of new synagogues, kindergartens, the Cave shelter, the Jewish hospital, relations with Italian and foreign communities and national and local authorities, the First and Second World Wars, the attack on the Greater Synagogue in 1982, visits by popes at the Great Synagogue from 1986 onwards, to the personal data of their members.

ASCER also presents:

• a Photographic Archive (scanned and filed by the company Win & Co. thanks to funding from the Lazio Region) which includes more than 9,000 images, taken from the end of the 19th century to the present day, concerning the ghetto area in the periods immediately preceding its destruction, the daily and religious life and institutions of the Jewish community of Rome from the end of the 19th century to the present day, including photos of the Land of Israel taken in the first decades of the 1900s
• a Music Archive (currently being inventoried by Maestro Claudio Di Segni) in which 285 original scores are kept, to which another 455 copies from the National Library of Jerusalem have been added for a total of 740 scores, dating back to the 19th and 20th centuries, performed during the period of the ghetto inside the Cinque Scole and, subsequently, in the Great Synagogue in Rome.