MIH
Intesa Sanpaolo
The Historical Archive of Intesa Sanpaolo is one of the most significant banking archives in Europe. It was established in 1984 as the Historical Archive of the Banca Commerciale Italiana.
Today, it manages the documentary heritage of several major institutions: the Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde (founded in 1823), the Banco Ambrosiano Veneto (1892), and the Banca Commerciale Italiana (1894), all based in Milan. In Rome-Acilia, it also preserves the archive of the Istituto Mobiliare Italiano (1931).
The collection comprises approximately 12 linear kilometers of documents, ranging from 1472 to 2006, along with thousands of videos, a collection of 1,500 piggy banks from around the world, and an iconographic section that includes architectural drawings, sketches, posters, and advertising graphics.
Particularly noteworthy is the recently acquired Publifoto Archive, which contains around 7 million photographs documenting events, personalities, and places from the early 1930s to the 1990s.
The Historical Archive not only safeguards the memory of the banking institution but also stands as a valuable collective cultural asset, providing rich resources for historical and cultural research.
Project design
Development of software platforms for cataloguing
OPAC development
Creation of a Digital Library
Digital archival consulting
The Historical Archive of Intesa Sanpaolo has chosen to renew its online presence by adopting the xDams Open Source platform, developed by regesta.exe and widely recognized for its effectiveness in the description and publication of inventories and digital resources.
Launched in 2012, the project involved the conversion and normalization of over 160,000 records, organized across twenty-one different data structures and archives from five different originating institutions.
Based on this work, the Historical Archive of Intesa Sanpaolo portal was developed, offering users the ability to perform open-ended searches across all preserved archival collections.
The xDams platform integrates descriptions of a wide range of document types, including iInventories of archival collections belonging to Intesa Sanpaolo and its pre-merger banks; photographic and audiovisual archives and the historical library.
The main goal of the project was the conversion and normalization of thousands of archival records—documents that reflect the results of three previous migrations and nearly thirty years of work.
Following this effort, the Historical Archive portal was launched, enabling open-ended searches across all preserved archival collections. Among these are approximately 300,000 photographs, dating from the second half of the 19th century onward.
Additionally, the Historical Archive collaborates with regesta.exe on initiatives aimed at safeguarding and sharing its heritage, such as the Historical Map of the Group and the reordering and cataloguing of the EGELI archival collection of Cariplo, in partnership with the CDEC Foundation.