Description
The archives are divided into: Istituto di San Paolo di Torino. Central Functions, Ufficio Pio, Educatorio Duchessa Isabella, Azienda di risparmio e credito (formerly Monte di Pietà), Credito Fondiario (Mortgages Section), Agricultural Credit and Public Works sections.
Date range
Essentially the documents date from between 1853 and 1950, with a significant presence of fonds and series from the second half of the nineteenth century.
Extent
9456 file units; 303 metres.
Fonds
The Central Functions section (Administrative Bodies, Secretariat, Accounts, Litigation and legal matters, Personnel, Real Estate), composed of more than four thousand file units, includes fundamental series such as articles of association with the relative preparatory studies, the minutes of the Management and later the Board of Directors and of the Permanent Committee, circulars and service orders, balance sheets, staff regulations and rules governing internal administration. Among the fonds of particular importance are the acquisitions and shareholdings, the systematic collection of forms, documentation regarding the purchase and restoration of the seventeenth-century building in Piazza San Carlo, Turin, the photographic fonds of the Bank’s head offices and branches, the documentation regarding the series of art monographs and of other publications.
The other sections relating to each historical body contain articles of association, regulations, minutes of resolutions, budgets, final accounts, inventory books, ledgers and publications. The volumes containing documentation of various Opere are an exception, with substantial series of final accounts and balance sheets, and some articles of association and minutes, that are found in the general section.
The documentation held by the Ufficio Pio and the Educatorio Duchessa Isabella are witness to the welfare and educational activity. The main series of the Ufficio Pio (437 file units) are the disputes, the legacies, the grants and the files of the “delegates of charity”. The archives of the Educatorio Duchessa Isabella (650 file units) includes syllabuses and speeches, school registers from the elementary school to the teacher training institute and the technical school, lists and photographs of the girls, almost three hundred personal files regarding teaching staff as well as technical and photographical documentation of the building located in Piazza Bernini.
As far back as 1879 the Monte di Pietà was working as a fully-fledged bank and in 1923 it obtained legal recognition of itsprevalent banking activity. In 1932 it took on the name Azienda di risparmio e credito (from 1950 Azienda bancaria), within which the secured credit business Monte pegniremained. The archives (1143 file units) include a considerable accounts fonds (budgets and final balance sheets, inventories, ledgers, day-books), the paperwork of loans granted to municipalities and provinces for public works, guaranteed by surtax delegacies, loans guaranteed by non real estate mortgages or bills, documentation regarding lines of credit and securities, papers regarding the head offices and branches, manuals on banking transactions, regulations and paperwork regarding loans backed by pledges.
The Credito Fondiario’s extremely large archives (3365 file units) bear witness to the importance of providing mortgages backed by the issue of mortgage bonds, a practice that dates back to 1866 when the relative law was passed. The main series are committee resolutions, final balance sheets, inventories, ledgers, day-books, registers of mortgages and borrowers, statistics, registers for the management of the mortgage bonds, experts and agents, manuals. It has been decided to keep, as a significant sample all the registered paperwork regarding mortgages extinguished in the years 1969-1971 (more than two thousand files).
There follow the fonds regarding two other special credit sections. The Agricultural Credit (69 file units) section, whose rich library will be described later on, operating in the sector of agricultural, agro-industrial and fisheries credit, was set up in 1984 and in 1992, following privatisation, it was merged in the Special Credit Department.
The autonomous Public Works Section (20 file units), which was set up in 1959 for the medium and long-term financing of public works and public utilities, in 1989 was conferred to Crediop which had become part of the San Paolo Group.
