The fonds contains data on purchase and sale transactions of real and personal property, such as land, houses, estates, ships, dowries, in the period from the middle of the 13th century to the beginning of the 19th century. The fonds is very important for the research and study of the topographic image of the city of Dubrovnik in that period, the development of urban planning, as well as for the research on trade of living quarters and buildings.
Scarce data available on Jewish people contained in the fonds reveal that in the second half of the 18th century Jews began to buy and sell real estate, i.e., houses that were mostly located near the ghetto, the exception being Abram David Maestro, who at the end of 1641 bought two houses in the street Lučarica, and two years later sold them to two Dubrovnik noblemen. Real estate purchases increased in the 80s of the 18th centuries so much that in 1799 the Senate decided that a Jew who owned several houses could keep only one and should sell the others. Members of Ragusan Jewish families Ambonetti, Coen, Costantini, Janni, Levi Mandolfo, Maestro, Pardo, Russo, Terni (i.e., vol. 135, ff. 180-181) are referenced in this fonds as both: buyers and sellers of houses. In accordance with the regulations of that time concerning the sale of real estate, apart from the name of the seller of the real estate in the document there is also a written consent of the members of his family. Therefore, next to the names of Jewish house-sellers are either the personal names of their wives, sons, and daughters, or the names of their legal guardians.
