The 5,652 square-metre site on a wooded hill is enclosed by a thick masonry wall was larger. A small stream separates the cemetery from the former Ohel built in 1928 and ruined during WWII. (The Jewish community of Gorizia, Italy, donated the building to Nova Gorica in 1977 in return for guarantees that the municipality would maintain it. The Ohel was reconstructed in the late 1980s, a simple structure with a small attached structure on one side. The municipality rents it out as a café.) The main entrance at the base of the cemetery’s triangular site has an iron gate with a menorah motif. A second entrance, a footbridge over the stream, is located near the triangle's point . Many of the approximately 900 gravestones are not in their original location. Some gravestones were found outside the walls of the cemetery. Some were brought in 1881 from an earlier cemetery. Some were moved inside the present walls during 1890s road constructions. The cemetery was used until the end of the 19th century by other communities in the vicinity. In 1876 an inventory of the cemetery in the archives of the Jewish community in Trieste (Italy) reveals 692 gravestones extant. The 1876 gravestone census lists 139 of the 692 graves from the Morpurgo family, 127 Gentillis, 80 Luzzattos, 56 Pincherles, 37 Senigaglias, 34 Bolaffios, 23 Jonas, 17 Richetts, 10 Dorfles, 7 Michelstaedters, 6 Reggios, 5 Pavias, 2Windspachs, 1 Schnabl and 1 Schonheit. A 1932 listing shows 878 burials. These lists contain biographical notes on some burials and transcriptions and translations of some epitaphs. The well mapped cemetery has each of the grave markers photographed. The earliest gravestone in the cemetery dating from 1371 was moved there from Maribor in 1831 by Salamon Luzzatto: ‘Regina, daughter of Zerach, wife of Benedetto’. The Institute for the Conservation of the Natural and Cultural Heritagelist legible inscriptions in four periods: 13th to 15th centuries: An 1865 gravestone found in the atrium of a house in Piazza del Duomo and now at the museum of Levi Joshua ben Isach(1406). A 1450 stone is probably of a member of the Morpurgo family. 16th to 17th centuries. One 1617 inscription of Jona family member came from another gravestone discovered as building material in a house in the town. An 1652 gravestone may be the oldest identified stone directly from the cemetery. 1732 to 1828. Sixteen stones transferred from the old cemetery to the current cemetery in 1881. 1829 to date: Approximately 900 stones with Hebrew and/or Italian inscriptions. WWII burials are the latest burials. Memorials to Auschwitz victims. Most of the gravestones are knee-high or lower grey sandstone markers, often very thick with flat rectangular or square faces and rounded tops usually with an epitaph and date of death framed within a border. A very few older stones have slightly more elaborate shapes including some with scalloped curves. Erosion is a problem. Many of the stones are barely legible. One older stones at the back of the cemetery is a round ball on a low cylindrical base. Other gravestones with decorative carving from several members of the large and important Morpurgo family from Maribor bear the family emblem: Jonah in the mouth of the whale. Other carved decorations include Levite pitchers and one fragment near the main entrance with a winged head, like a Sephardic angel. The most famous person buried in the cemetery is early existentialist Carlo Michelstaedter (1887 to (suicide) 1910) whose plain upright stone with his name and the dates of =birth and death is next to the grave of his father, Alberto (1850-1929), a businessman. Alberto’s gravestone has a Levite pitcher carving and a long Italian epitaph with Hebrew text beneath.