On 1st August 1944 a group of German soldiers broke into number 22 via Sant’Andrea, the home of Giuseppe Pardo Roques, Leader of the Jewish Community in Pisa. There followed a massacre in which Pardo Roques, Dario, Teofilo e Cesare Gallichi, Ida De Cori, Ernesto and Cesira Levi (all Jewish), and Silvia Bonanni, Giovanna and Alice Ulivari, Emilia del Francia and Daniele Ristori (Chrisians) were all killed.

This shocking massacre, apparently in the search for non-existent treasures, is still raw in the memory of Pisa. A marble plaque on the facade of the building, put up in 1945 by Pisa Town council, records the event. Roques, unforgettable Parnas (“chief”, as he was called by the Jewish community), was known both for his erudition and his unflagging works of charity that had earned him the respect of the entire city.

The house as it is today is in fact part of a much larger building, known since the 14th century, that extended from Piazza S. Francesco, with gardens behind. In the 14th century, these buildings belonged to the Charterhouse at Calci, that early on began to rent out parts of it and later, to sell them. Thus, after passing through the hands of several owners, the house in via S. Andrea was bought in 1790 by the Pardo Roques family. It was not the exact house of the Nazi massacre in 1944, which was bought later, in 1803, from another important Jewish family, the Aghibs of Livorno.