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Temporary exhibitions are an effective tool for enhancing the documentary heritage of historical archives, transforming them from places of mere preservation into vibrant and accessible cultural spaces.
By displaying original documents, the public is given the opportunity to engage directly with history, making tangible events, figures, and stories that would otherwise remain confined to storage.
This direct engagement can evoke emotions and spark curiosity in ways that digital reproductions can rarely match. Temporary exhibitions also play an important educational and outreach role, reaching broader and more diverse audiences beyond specialists, while fostering archival culture and awareness of the importance of documentary heritage for collective identity. Finally, such exhibitions strengthen the bond between the archive and its territory, enhance the institution’s visibility, and can attract new users and supporters.
Aware of this potential, Fondazione Roma has chosen to complement the permanent display of a significant selection of documents from the two archives it preserves with temporary thematic exhibitions. These projects aim to enhance its important historical archival heritage and to spark interest and curiosity in the dimension of historical memory, which increasingly proves capable of offering interpretative keys to contemporary reality.
Paths of Hope.
Testimonies from the Historical Archive of Fondazione Roma
The Jubilee is an occasion of celebration and reconciliation that involves the entire community of believers and, in its original conception, embodies an idea that transcends countries and nations. It addresses the whole world and invites peoples to celebrate it within a broader community. At the same time, the Jubilee is also a local event centered in the city of Rome, the heart of the community of the faithful and the destination of pilgrimage.
It is therefore inevitable that traces and testimonies of the Jubilee, and of the ideas underlying it, are woven throughout the fabric of Rome’s great history and the everyday lives of its inhabitants.
The Historical Archive of Fondazione Roma preserves the archival collections of two institutions closely intertwined with the city’s history: the Sacro Monte della Pietà and the Cassa di Risparmio di Roma.
They were not merely financial institutions, but bodies that, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, provided support and assistance to the entire community a mission that is now carried forward by Fondazione Roma.
These documents thus offer pathways of discovery and storytelling, intertwining major themes such as the Jubilees and the pilgrims who participated in them including notable historical figures alongside the ongoing charitable work of the two institutions, which provided hope to the humblest members of the community.
The exhibition guides visitors through stories of queens and peasants, destruction and reconstruction, the steadfast defense of the most vulnerable against the forces of nature, and hopes for redemption and renewal topics that, unfortunately, remain closely relevant today.
Even if the journeys through the documents do not always lead directly to the heart of the Jubilee, along the way there lingers the enduring spirit of conversion, penance, and reconciliation and, consequently, of solidarity, hope, justice, joy, and peace with one’s fellow human beings, which is the deepest meaning of every Jubilee pilgrimage.
De Arte Pingendi.
Painting in the Documents of the Monte di Pietà of Rome
The exhibition “De Arte Pingendi: Painting in the Documents of the Monte di Pietà of Rome” (November 21, 2025 – April 12, 2026) takes inspiration from Dalí’s work 50 Magical Secrets for Painting, in which he praises the Renaissance masters (Raphael, Leonardo, Bramante, Palladio) as well as his great contemporary, Pablo Picasso.
The displayed documents highlight the significant and little-explored relationship between the Monte di Pietà and the arts, particularly painting, both as a patron and as a recipient of a major artistic heritage. The pictorial and sculptural representations of works commissioned by, or donated to the Monte di Pietà helped shape the iconography of charity and mercy, themes favored by the institution.
The exhibition is enriched by two prestigious loans: Leonardo da Vinci’s Treatise on Painting (1540) from the Vatican Apostolic Library, and the 1519 letter from Raphael, in collaboration with Baldassare Castiglione, addressed to Pope Leo X, from the State Archives of Mantua.
The exhibition allows visitors to admire an important selection of documents and materials from the two archival collections preserved by Fondazione Roma: the Monte di Pietà and the Cassa di Risparmio di Roma.