This area was originally called “contrada di San Giovanni”, due to the church dedicated to San Giovanni Battista, built at the end of the sixteenth century by order of Vito di Dornberg, imperial ambassador to Venice and Rome.

It was here that, between 1696 and 1698, the decision was made to create the Jewish ghetto, established by order of Emperor Leopold I. At night, the entire area was sealed off by two gates, one located near the Corno stream, the other next to the church of San Giovanni Battista. Only during the French domination, in the early 19th century, was the ghetto definitively abolished, with the extension of full civil rights to Jews. The ghetto's main street, named in 1880 after Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, a famous glottologist of Gorizia origin, was renamed "Via Tunisi" in 1940, following the racial measures of 1938, which required the removal of dedications to figures of Jewish "race" from the streets. During the Nazi occupation in November 1943, all the remaining Jews in the city were arrested and deported to Auschwitz: among them were Carlo Michelstaedter's mother and sister. The street was renamed Ascoli only in 1950.