Turin State Archive
The Turin State Archive holds about 85 kilometres of documents on the history of Piedmont, Italy and Europe, across two sites: the Sezione Corte, at piazza Castello 209, and the Sezioni Riunite, at via Piave 21.[1][2] It descends from the "Tesoro di carte" of the Counts of Savoy, dating to the 12th century, which originated in Chambéry and was later moved to Turin.[4]
Juvarra's building
In 1729 the lawyer Gian Claudio Garbiglione was appointed royal archivist, and on 19 May 1731 a decree of Carlo Emanuele III completed the reorganisation of the papers into six categories, from treaties to ceremonial matters.[5] On 13 March 1731 the king approved Filippo Juvarra's design for a building conceived from the outset as an archive, a case the institution describes as unmatched among the central archives of Europe: three floors with five large halls each, built from April 1731; at the end of 1734 the papers were moved there from Palazzo Reale.[3][2] Juvarra also designed the cabinets, and the façade is marked by giant-order pilasters; from 1740 the Teatro Regio by Alfieri stood alongside the building.[5]
Under the French, between 1804 and 1815, the building was emptied and turned into a school, and the papers returned there in 1814; since 1982 two underground floors have been excavated, with 11,000 linear metres of shelving.[3] The building forms part, together with the Prefettura, of the Zona di Comando of the UNESCO site of the Residenze sabaude.[9]
From the 19th century to today
With the Statuto Albertino of 1848 the institution took the name Archivi Generali del Regno; in 1874 it became the Sovrintendenza degli archivi piemontesi, and in 1974 it passed from the Ministry of the Interior to the new Ministry for Cultural Heritage.[4] Until 1925 the papers were divided among several locations; that year sections II, III and IV were brought together in the former San Luigi hospital on via Piave, designed by Giuseppe Talucchi in 1818 for a hundred contagious patients.[2][4] The Sezione Corte holds the papers of the dynasty, of the Secretariats of State and of ecclesiastical bodies and families; the Sezioni Riunite hold those of the Camera dei Conti, the financial, military and judicial apparatus of the Savoy state, and notarial and land-registry records.[6][7] The institution is also home to a School of Archival Studies, Palaeography and Diplomatics.[8]
In 2025 the archive hosted the exhibition "Prendere le misure" on the Gruppo Finanziario Tessile, whose archive of about 5,000 items is held there, and, in Juvarra's halls, "Paolo Paschetto. Archivio d'artista", featuring more than two hundred works.[10][11]
Related articles: Canavese, House of Savoy, Palazzo Chiablese, Palazzo Reale, Residenze sabaude, Royal Armoury of Turin
Pages linking here
- Carlo Mollino
- Fenestrelle Fort
- Grugliasco
- Palazzo Chiablese
- Residenze sabaude
- Royal Armoury of Turin
- Teatro Regio
- Umberto II
- Val di Susa