Since its founding in 1574, the Archbishop’s Archive has changed its location three times. The first location was within the Archbishop’s Palace and the foundation stone was put by Mgr. Ascanio Marchesini, an apostolic visitor, but that is the only information that we have.
Between 1818 and 1826 Card. Carlo Oppizzoni relocated the Archive to a more modern space in the southern part of the Archbishop Palace (between via Altabella and the courtyard). To accommodate this move, large halls previously used by the University of Bologna for degree ceremonies – which had previously been used by the College of Doctors – were repurposed. The walls of the halls were covered with 20ft high deep shelving that could contain several lines of items. In the centre of the halls, support surfaces were placed, and the higher shelving were reachable through mobile staired-towers called “mobile-towers”. Each shelving unit was provided with identification through letters and numbers, to ensure the items were properly organized and easy to locate.
After one century of activity, Archive’s contents grew to such an extent that there was no longer enough space. The same location was used also to store papers which had no designated place, which led to the need for a new location. Between 1960 and 1961, Card. Giacomo Lercaro decided on the move. The northern part of the Archbishop’s Palace’s courtyard was transformed with the addition of a 26-foot-tall multi-level storage tower e and 10,000 feet of shelving. This new location, which is still in use today, was completed, and all the items were moved in time for the official inauguration on October 5th,1961. The archive was then opened to the public in February 1962.
Ten year later, new expansions took place. The archive was enlarged with a study room and a new room added from a nearby basement. In 1992, further development of the reading room took place, with the acquisition of two additional rooms to house the library and some more collections.