Jewish presence in San Ginesio can be dated back to 1295, when Jews provided financing to a company involved in the wool industry. The Jews resided mainly in the Alvaneto district, which extended from Piazza dei Gentili to what is currently piazza Thomas Eskine Holland.
The Jewish cemetery, called “Garden of the Jews”, was located by the towns walls and is currently covered by a rich vegetation and shows no trace of Jewish tomb inscriptions. There are documents certifying substantial real-estate holdings by Jewish families, which had to be liquidated as a consequence of the papal bull of 1555. The Jewish community was eventually expelled in 1569, by the implementation of papal directives in the Hebraeorum gens bull, except for those who converted.
Not far from San Ginesio, the mountain village of Sarnano welcomed Jews in the early fourteenth century. They engaged in money lending and traded in wool and textiles, particularly the so-called “Sarnano cloth.”
In 1557-58, there were at least seven Jewish households in town, but nothing of this tiny community has survived.
