During its history the Archivio Generale Arcivescovile has changed location twice since its inception in 1573. This first location, ordered by Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti (1566-1597), was located inside the archbishop’s palace in a non-specified place, while the foundation stone was set by the apostolic visitor Ascanio Marchesini.
It was only at the beginning of the XIX century (between 1818 and 1826) when Cardinal Carlo Oppizzoni (1802 – 1855) felt the need to find a new home for the archive. It was placed at the final floor of the southern wing of the archbishop’s palace, between Via Altabella and the palace’s courtyard. The archive occupied the big halls that once housed the Collegio dei Dottori, where the students of the University of Bologna received their degrees. The walls of those halls were covered by 6 meters high shelves that were also of considerable depth, containing up to four archival units in a row. Each storing room had a staircase with wheels called ‘mobile towers’. Every shelf was identified by a code composed of letters and numbers that made it easy to search for documents and to store them in the right place. After a century of use, the amount of documentation stored in the archive exceeded its physical capacity, and there had been additional losses of space because some of the rooms of the archive had been assigned to other offices of the curia which used them as storage rooms for documents under haphazard organization.
Because of the shortage of space, a search for a new location began. The result was the current location, decreed by Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro (1952 – 1968) and established between 1960 and 1961. It was located in another wing of the archbishop’s palace, in the northern part of the courtyard. It consisted of eight floors with 3100 meters of metallic shelfs. The archive was transferred after the construction finished, and was inaugurated on October 5th 1961 (the Saint’s Feast day of Saint Petronio) and the services to the public began the following February. Ten years later, the archive’s space was expanded with a new study room and more capacity in the storage areas of the archive. In 1992, the study room was enlarged and two new rooms were acquired to host the library and house new archives that grew beyond storage rooms.
You must be logged in to post a comment.