Italy

Report by Helen Wood on working in Italy

Hierarchical structure of archive repositories in Italy

Archivists, archival bodies and repositories in Italy are more under state control than they are in Britain. This is reflected in the fact that there is a ministry with responsibility for archives called Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita Culturali. It is probably right to assume that on the whole Italians are much more passionate about their heritage on a national level because of the sheer volume they have. Governments realised long ago that it was important to safeguard art, artefacts and documents and there are many laws relating to “culture”, not just Public Records Acts.

La sopraintendenza archivistica is a position held in regions of Italy which acts on an equivalent level to the HMC, BRA, BAC and PRO inspectors all in one. These “archive superintendants” act to care for and safeguard archives, assessing the state of conservation and levels of organisation of public and private collections and advising or reprimanding where necessary. Often there will be a group of people responsible for different types of archive working within the region. Some have their physical offices based inside the State Archives building.

Italy has no “National Archive” and instead has a complex system of more local repositories. This is a reflection on the history of the country itself. Bearing in mind that most Italian regions were previously states or communes in their own right before the Reunification of Italy it is not surprising that the way records have been kept and arranged reflect this fact. 
 
In terms of “national and local government archives” there are the following offices:

Archivio di Stato      (equivalent to County Record Offices) e.g. Archivio di Stato di Firenze

Archivio regionali      regional archive offices
Archivio provincali    provincial archive offices

Archivio comunali     (broadly equivalent to City Record Offices) Archivio Storico del Comune di Firenze

Not all areas will have all of the above offices as it is dependant on the history of the area. 

In addition to “official” records there are of course numerous other types of repository just as there are in England:

Archivi universitari                            university archives

Archivi ecclesiastici                           religious archives

Archivi economici e d’impresa              business archives

Business archives are perhaps one of the better served areas of record keeping, especially in the Lombard region and Milan. The most famous business archives are those of banking institutions which, like those in Britain realised a while ago that they could make more of their history and had the money to do so. For example, Banca Commerciale Italiana and Credito Italiano (Milan), Banca D’Italia and Banca Di Roma (Rome). The head archivists of these repositories have been prolific in their field. Specialist business repositories include those of publishing houses (such as Mondadori and Feltrinelli), insurance companies (Assicurazione Nazionale) and utility companies. Other specialist repositories include those of hospitals and political movements. Florence is home to the European Archives.

Centro sulla storia dell’impresa e dell’innovazione is a recently set up organisation which acts in a similar way to the Business Archives Council in England. It employs archivists to catalogue business archives such as those of the newspaper Corriera della Sera and advises record holders how to maintain their archive and if necessary where to deposit them. However, unlike the BAC they also hope to eventually set up a sort of “national centre” for business archives and are just as keen on museum objects as archives. 

Useful addresses

ANAI www.anai.org (this site includes links to regional archive offices as well as archival legislation)

Minstero per I Beni e le Attivita Culturali ww.beniculturali.it

Vatican archives  www.vatican.va

Working in Italy: www.goitaly.about.com 
www.expataccess.com/next/mitaly

Last modified 07/09/2004