State Archives of Milan
The State Archives of Milan, based at the Palazzo del Senato, Via Senato n. 10, is the state institution responsible, by law, for the preservation of records from the offices of state bodies, as well as public bodies and private producers. Slowly formed through the agglomeration of the various archival poles spread throughout Austrian Milan between the end of the 18th and the first half of the 19th century, the State Archives finally found its home in the former Palazzo del Senato under the direction of Cesare Cantù in 1886. Having become a research and training center of excellence under the directorships of Luigi Fumi and Giovanni Vittani, the State Archives of Milan since 1945 continued its role as a preservation institution, adapting to the needs of the times and developing the School of Archival Studies, Palaeography and Diplomatics attached to the Institute.
The Milan State Archives, which currently covers 45 km of shelves and a storage space of 6,460 m2, preserves archives and collections containing records of political and religious institutions prior to Unification, such as the acts produced by the Sforza chancery or under the Spanish and Austrian governments. Following the outline prepared by the General Directorate of Archives, in addition to the documents produced before 1861, the State Archives collects and preserves the acts produced by the Italian state agencies reporting to Milan, such as the prefecture, the court and the Milanese police headquarters, as well as notarial acts from the local district notarial archives and those from the archives of the military districts. Finally, there is the miscellaneous archives subdivision, not falling under the previous chronological subdivision and consisting mainly of private or public archives.
Some of the most famous documents that the Archives preserve include the Cartola de accepto mundio, the oldest Italian parchment preserved in any Italian State Archives ; the Codicetto di Lodi; autographed letters from Leonardo da Vinci, Charles V, Ludovico il Moro and Alessandro Volta; a valuable copy of the Napoleonic Code autographed by the emperor himself; and the minutes of the trial against Gaetano Bresci.
History
The formation process (1786-1851)
The move to San Fedele: Ilario Corte and Kaunitz
The date with which the formation of the nucleus of what was to become the State Archives of Milan is identified is 1781, the year in which the documentation from the Porta Giovia Castle, the present-day Sforza Castle, was transferred to the Jesuit college, located in the church of San Fedele. The documentation consisted mainly of the Acts produced by the magistracies of the Duchy of Milan under the Sforzas, since the Visconti documentation was almost completely destroyed following the death of the last duke of that dynasty, Filippo Maria, but it also included the archives of the Spanish and Austrian chancelleries of the 16th-18th centuries. The decision to move from the old to the new location was dictated by the dual desire of the archivist Ilario Corte and Emperor Joseph II's minister plenipotentiary, Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz-Rietberg, to secure the documents from the perilous Castello Sforzesco, but also to "rationalize" the state's documentary heritage according to the principles of rational organization of the Enlightenment temperament according to the method of ordering by subject matter that would later find a radicalization in the work of Corti's pupil, Luca Peroni. The decision by the Austrian government to establish a first General Directorate of Archives aimed at coordinating the work of Lombard archives in 1786 can be framed in this perspective.The Napoleonic period and the Restoration
With the arrival of the French troops led by Napoleon Bonaparte a new historical phase opened for Lombardy, in which the former Duchy of Milan, reorganized and enlarged first as the Cisalpine Republic, then as the Italian Republic and finally as the Kingdom of Italy, became the centerpiece of a new independent state with its own court and various ministries, though it was actually subject to the will of Paris. During nearly two decades of French rule, the amount of archival holdings in the National Archives, whose direction was taken between 1800 and 1812 by Luigi Bossi Visconti, increased significantly due in part to the material produced by the various ministries of the Kingdom. Also at the behest of the French, in place of the General Directorate of Archives was established the General Prefecture of Libraries and Archives, which would re-adopt its old name upon the return of the Austrians in 1814.The various archival centers
Over a period of time from the end of the first Austrian period to the second domination with the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, various archival centers were established that were assigned to preserve certain specific collections, which would then gradually merge into the present State Archives:- In the Guide to Milan for 1848, it is reported that, in Contrada della Sala at number 956, there was the headquarters of the Directorate along with what was called the Central Archives.
- At San Damiano the records relating to the Senate magistracy, established in 1499 and abolished in 1786, and then those concerning the Curia of the podestà and the Judges of Justice were all gathered.
- Beginning in 1787, the archives of religious bodies and congregations suppressed under Joseph II first and Napoleon later found space in the former hospice of San Michele alla Chiusa. Following various moves, the records of the suppressed orders found their place in the former convent of Santo Spirito from 1839. Only later did what had by then become the Religion Fund find its final place in San Fedele.
- In 1802 the former Helvetic College became the headquarters of the Ministry of War of the Italian Republic first and then of the Kingdom of Italy, resulting in the creation of the military archives, which, after being deposited at the church of San Carpoforo at number 1885, would be moved to the San Fedele premises in 1852.
- In Palazzo Marino from 1823 the financial archive was housed. Then in 1831 it was transferred to the former Monastery of Sant'Ulderico al Bocchetto, located at number 2466.
- The Broletto, already by the will of Maria Theresa of Austria, became the seat of the notarial archives, which would remain there until the entire first half of the 19th century.
- The Diplomatic Archive, established in 1807, was placed in 1816 in the Rectory of San Bartolomeo and then moved to the premises of the Notarial Archive in Piazza dei Mercanti at number 3091 from May 1840.
- The Judicial Archives, established in 1802 as the Judicial Depository Archives, came under the dependencies of the San Fedele headquarters in 1823. Located in the cloister of the Basilica of Sant'Eustorgio in 1920, it suffered very heavy losses during the bombings in August 1943.
The transfer to the Former Helvetic College (1851-1886)
The director's desire, however, had to run up against bureaucratic and technical impediments that lingered for more than two decades, so much so that Osio's successor, the historian Cesare Cantù, remarked in the early 1880s that there was still considerable slowness in the fulfillment of his predecessor's intentions. While in 1873 the General Directorate of Archives took up residence in the Palazzo del Senato, it was not until 1886 that all the archival collections hitherto scattered in various parts of Milan, with the exception of the notarial archives, finally were housed there.
From 1886 to 1945
From Osio to Cantù
With the commission chaired by Luigi Cibrario in 1870, it was decided that, as of 1875, the administration of the fifteen state archives in the country should be placed under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior. The State Archives of Milan, which was slowly coming into operation through the efforts of Osio first and Cantù later, also began to collect documentation from the archives of state offices in addition to that mentioned earlier. Cantù, moreover, was an important organizer of the activities of the archives and its related bodies, so much so that:In fact, it was up to Cantù to actually organize the archive once it became operational. Cantù is also credited with the founding in 1874 of the journal Archivio Storico Lombardo, which, in the intentions of the celebrated man of letters and historian, was to be "also the journal of the State Archives."