Jewish Sections

Jewish cemetery section

This section of the cemetery is heavily overgrown, creating a magical but transitory impression.

Jewish cemetery section

The Jewish community was very assimilated into Italian culture 100 years ago. Styles and imagery of Italian society were often embraced in Jewish memorials.

Jewish cemetery section

A marble book with deeply carved intricate olive branches lies forgotten and half buried.

Jewish cemetery section

Within Staglieno are two Jewish sections, which suffer from neglect and deterioration. The local Jewish community, decimated in WWII, is now quite small.

Memorial stone

An memorial stone set in the wall of the old Jewish section of Staglieno Cemetery, overgrown with ivy.

Portrait bust

Representational figurative work is rare in the Jewish tradition since it’s prohibited by the standard interpretation of the 2nd commandment, but the Italian Jewish community felt very comfortably integrated into Italian society, and often commissioned figurative artwork.

Sarcophagus

A sarcophagus nearly forgotten and heavily overgrown with weeds and ivy.

Although Staglieno is primarily a Catholic cemetery, but it serves the entire Genoa community. Within its walls are two Jewish cemeteries, a Protestant section, Orthodox, Moslem, and military and civilian English burial grounds. While all of Staglieno suffers from neglect, nowhere is it more evident than in these sections. The small Jewish community of Genoa was devastated during the Holocaust, and very few remain to tend to their ancestors.

AFIMS is helping support a major clean up and restoration of the old Jewish section at Staglieno Cemetery.

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