In its June issue, dedicated to Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the Giornale dell’Arte, an eminent monthly magazine covering art and culture, carries an article focusing on the Generali Historical Archive.

The article highlights the variety and unique nature of the Archive’s contents: documents, photographs, posters and artwork relevant to the history, not only of Generali, but of all of Europe, meriting wide exposure. Writings and records held since the 19th century: the words of Kafka, once employed in the Prague offices; descriptions of the opening of the Suez Canal which transformed global shipping routes of the time; Umberto Nobile‘s documents on the historic scientific expedition to the North Pole; items on space insurance, a sector in which the Company was a pioneer; and even the futuristic hail charts made for the Turin expo of 1884 and noted “for the care of the drawings, recalling the abstract painting of Paul Klee and Vasilij Kandiskij”.

There are a number of impressive iconic items, such as the automatic accident insurance dispenser first presented at the Turin Expo in 1898 (a genuine vending machine before the term entered general circulation) and the automatic sorting machine in use in the 1930s, a showpiece of Generali’s mechanographic centre.

The article notes that “the Archive, a cultural asset recognised by the Italian Ministry of Culture for its importance internationally and in the economic development of Trieste, preserves and enhances its history, and makes it available to the community. It is an expression of Trieste as a city of trade, a crossroads between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where people, businesses and ideas are the essential elements of that fertile humus called the Trieste System, the source of Generali’s lifeblood since its origins”.

This makes the Generali Historical Archive, a custodian of Italian history and the proudly preserved treasures of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a rewarding destination of cultural tourism.

Happy reading and happy holidays! The newsletter will return in September.