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Compagnia di San Paolo

Turin philanthropic foundation born in 1563 as a lay confraternity: its Monte di Pietà gave rise to one of Italy's major banks, of which it is the leading shareholder.

Image from the ANSA Piemonte publication
From the publication of ANSA Piemonte, 2026-09-23

The Compagnia di San Paolo is a private-law philanthropic foundation based in Turin, at corso Vittorio Emanuele II 75. Born in 1563 as a lay confraternity of seven citizens, for over four centuries it combined assistance to the poor with lending activity, eventually giving rise to the bank that today is part of Intesa Sanpaolo, of which it is the leading shareholder. It is among the largest European foundations of banking origin and has strong roots in Piedmont, Liguria and Valle d'Aosta.[1][2]

The 1563 confraternity

The Compagnia was born on 25 January 1563 in the convent of San Domenico. Its founders were the lawyer Giovanni Antonio Albosco, who promoted the initiative, the captain Pietro della Rossa, the canon Battista Gambara, the notary Nicolò Ursio, the merchant Benedetto Valle, the tailor Nicolino Bossio and the bookseller Ludovico Nasi. It was the year the Council of Trent closed and the year Emanuele Filiberto moved the Savoy capital from Chambéry to Turin. After some spiritual uncertainties on Albosco's part, who was drawn to certain points of reformed doctrine, the brethren placed themselves under the spiritual guidance of the Jesuit Leonardo Magnano.[3] The group, originally called the Compagnia della Fede Cattolica, had two aims: helping an impoverished population and countering the spread of the Protestant Reformation.[4]

Monte di Pietà, dowries and houses for women

In 1579 the Compagnia refounded the Monte di Pietà, which granted small pawn loans to keep the poor away from usury.[2][3] In 1589 it built the Casa del Soccorso, for poor and unaccompanied young women exposed to exploitation, and in 1595 it established the Ufficio Pio, which assisted people in difficulty from every social class: impoverished nobles, ruined merchants, orphans, the sick and beggars.[1] The first core of its endowment came from a bequest by Aleramo Beccuti, 300 scudi a year, and the Ufficio Pio also administered dowries for poor girls.[3] From 1653 the Compagnia also managed the public debt of the Savoy state through the Monte della Fede, and in 1683 it opened the Casa del Deposito, also conceived as a shelter for women victims of violence.[4] The historian Blythe Alice Raviola summed up the institution's growth mechanism this way: "the more bequests in favour of the Compagnia increased, the more its assets grew stronger".[3]

From suppression to a bank

Under French rule the Compagnia was suppressed in 1802. The Monte di Pietà, reorganised in 1804, took on an increasingly credit-based character, and with the Restoration the institution was revived.[1] From 1815 it directed Turin's charitable institutions (Opere pie); in 1848 a ministerial inquiry proposed its suppression.[3] The turning point came in 1853, under Vittorio Emanuele II: in the Kingdom of Sardinia the confraternity's religious functions were separated from its economic ones, and its assets and management passed to a publicly appointed council, the Opere Pie di San Paolo.[1][4] In 1867 the Credito Fondiario began, dedicated to loans for agriculture and construction.[2]

In 1883 the old Case del Soccorso and del Deposito took the name Educatorio Duchessa Isabella.[1] Its building in piazza Bernini, designed by brothers Giuseppe and Attilio Davicini, had its foundation stone laid on 15 April 1890 in the presence of the Duchess of Genoa, Isabella of Savoy-Wittelsbach. It served as a military hospital during the First World War and was badly damaged by the bombings of 1942.[5] In 1900 the institution contributed to the founding of the Amedeo di Savoia hospital, and in 1935 it completed the financing of the new Molinette hospital.[2] In 1927 it became a credit institution and in 1932 a public-law body, under the name Istituto di San Paolo di Torino.[3][4] In the postwar years the Istituto Bancario San Paolo di Torino played an important role in reconstruction.[1]

The foundation

The Amato-Carli law required the separation of banks from philanthropic activities. At the end of 1991 the lending business passed to a joint-stock company, the Istituto Bancario San Paolo di Torino S.p.A., while the institution resumed its old name, Compagnia di San Paolo, and became a foundation: the value of the banking assets formed its philanthropic endowment.[1][4] In 2000 it adopted a private-law statute.[2]

In 2013, for its 450th anniversary, the publishing house Einaudi published a two-volume history edited by Walter Barberis and Anna Cantaluppi. The work, based on the institution's historical archive, involved dozens of scholars. In the preface, then-president Sergio Chiamparino wrote that "this history of the Compagnia therefore serves no celebratory or political intent".[6] The historical archive, managed by the Fondazione 1563 per l'Arte e la Cultura,[6] has been housed since 2014 in the former Educatorio Duchessa Isabella, restored by the Compagnia between 2009 and 2015 and, since 2015, the seat of the Fondazione 1563 itself.[5]

Assets and activities

As of 31 December 2023 its assets stood at about 8.3 billion euros. About 3.1 billion were invested in Intesa Sanpaolo, while the diversified portion amounted to about 4.2 billion.[2] As of September 2026 the Compagnia held 6.526% of the bank's ordinary shares and was its leading shareholder, ahead of the Fondazione Cariplo.[7] Its governing bodies are the president, the secretary general, a General Council of 17 members, a Management Committee of 5 members and the Board of Auditors.[2]

On 16 April 2024 the General Council unanimously elected as president for the 2024-2027 term Marco Gilli, a Turin native born in 1965 and former rector of the Politecnico di Torino. Gilli succeeded Francesco Profumo, who had resigned on 22 February 2024.[8] On his election he said: "I face this great challenge with enthusiasm and confidence, knowing I am supported by a highly skilled multidisciplinary team in terms of both governance and structure".[8]

The 2025-2028 strategic plan, whose guidelines were presented on 15 July 2024, envisages over 700 million euros in grants over four years. In the previous four-year period the figure was 710 million, with an estimated impact of 3.5 billion on the local area.[9] Since 2020 its activity has been organised around three goals (Culture, People and Planet) and fourteen missions, linked to the goals of the 2030 Agenda.[1][10] The Compagnia also acts through instrumental bodies: the Ufficio Pio, the Fondazione per la Scuola, the Fondazione 1563, the Carlo Alberto College, the LINKS foundation, and the IIGM, dedicated to genomics and precision medicine.[2][10]

The domain compagnia.torino.it in the web archive

The domain compagnia.torino.it, in the web archive since 4 January 2000, presents itself as "Compagnia di San Paolo - Home Page". Since 2016 the site has redirected to the domain compagniadisanpaolo.it.

The domain compagnia.torino.it (2000)

The domain compagnia.torino.it already hosted the Compagnia di San Paolo's home page in January 2000, in Italian and English versions.

From compagnia.torino.it to compagniadisanpaolo.it

In the snapshot of 4 January 2000, the domain compagnia.torino.it hosts a simple placeholder page, "Compagnia di San Paolo - Home Page", available in Italian and English. The institution later published its own site on the domain compagniadisanpaolo.it: in the snapshot of 10 January 2016 the site presents sections on the Foundation's aims, bodies, structure and statute.

The site compagnia.torino.it (2000-2004)

From January 2000 the official site of the Compagnia di San Paolo was hosted at compagnia.torino.it, with an Italian and an English version; the last web-archive snapshot with that address's own content dates from 24 July 2004.

The domain compagnia.torino.it, a placeholder page since 2000

The domain compagnia.torino.it was registered for the Compagnia di San Paolo by January 2000 at the latest, but it always remained a simple bilingual placeholder page ("Compagnia di San Paolo - Home Page"), confirmed identical in July 2004; the address later appeared parked and without its own content until at least March 2021.

The domain compagnia.torino.it

Alongside its institutional site, the Compagnia di San Paolo also used the domain compagnia.torino.it, online from 4 January 2000: web-archive snapshots show it as a simple bilingual entry page ("Compagnia di San Paolo - Home Page" / "VERSIONE ITALIANA ENGLISH VERSION"), remaining largely unchanged until the last snapshot of 2 March 2021.

Related articles: Intesa Sanpaolo

Pages linking here

Sources

  1. Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo
  2. Mole24 — 5 November 2025
  3. Letture.org
  4. Fondazione Ansaldo
  5. MuseoTorino
  6. Fondazione 1563 per l'Arte e la Cultura
  7. Intesa Sanpaolo
  8. ANSA — 16 April 2024
  9. Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo — 15 July 2024
  10. Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo
  11. web.archive.org — 4 January 2000
  12. web.archive.org — 10 January 2016
  13. Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) — 4 January 2000
  14. Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) — 24 July 2004
  15. Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) — 2 March 2021

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