The Generali Historical Archive will be one of more than 400 archives from Italy and elsewhere represented in Archivissima (the first Italian festival dedicated to the promotion and appreciation of historical archives), with the focus this year on travel and travelogues. It will feature in a special event on the evening of 9 June to mark the Notte degli Archivi (Archives Night) and the associated Giornata Internazionale degli Archivi (International Archives Day).
Archives, museums, theatres, city streets and digital platforms will be represented in a weekend of live and online social events in Turin and throughout Italy, with each physical or virtual location extending the great story that Archivissima weaves each year from archival histories.
The Generali Historical Archive takes part on Friday 9 June with three special guided tours on the theme of travel, through a special evening opening of Palazzo Berlam, the home of the Archive.
The Historical Archive will take guests on a 191-year world tour, a historical-geographical journey of discovery revealing the importance of travel and knowledge of cultures, countries, languages and religions to the Generali’s identity. It begins with Generali’s foundation on 26 December 1831 in Trieste, the cosmopolitan free port of the Habsburg Empire, and then follows the myriad maps that trace the opening of the Group’s agencies and companies all over the world: in Trieste, Venice, Milan, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and Bordeaux, Marseilles, Barcelona, Hamburg, Paris, Zagreb and Lviv in the first few years alone. It will revisit the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the role of Generali and the “Trieste system”; there will be a reading of the personnel file of Franz Kafka, who worked for Generali in Prague in 1907; and it will look back to little-known but extraordinary events, such the round-the-world journey of two Generali employees to return home after the First World War. There will also be an opportunity to examine the 1898 automatic policy dispenser that issued insurance for numerous train journeys .
Documents, letters, maps and photographs will make it possible to explore a network along which knowledge has travelled continuously to this day.
To book: apply in advance by no later than 7 June at archiviostoricogenerali@generali.com giving your name, email address and preferred time.
Times available: 6:30 pm – 7:15 pm – 8:00 pm
Approximate duration: 90 minutes
Groups: of up to 15 people accommodated