In 2010, Fondazione Roma acquired from UniCredit S.p.A. the archival collections relating to the Sacred Monte della Pietà of Rome and the Cassa di Risparmio di Roma. The purpose is the preservation of a historical memory that enhances the charitable spirit, to which the Foundation’s roots can be traced.

This is a complex and heterogeneous documentary system, accumulated between the 16th and 20th centuries and preserved within Palazzo Sciarra-Colonna.

Fondazione Roma, aware of the valuable interest inherent in such a significant heritage, has worked to ensure that both archival collections were preserved and enhanced, not only as it has always been a promoter of art and culture but also because its own roots can be traced to this documentary corpus.

If indeed the Monti di Pietà were born around the second half of the fifteenth century with the precise purpose of granting free loans on favorable terms in exchange for a pledge, similarly the founders of the Cassa di Risparmio di Roma expressly renounced the profits from invested money, to destine them exclusively for philanthropic purposes.

The recovery of these precious documents, made available by Fondazione Roma for the community of scholars and visitors within its Historical Archive at Palazzo Sciarra-Colonna, was made possible thanks to precious collaboration with the UniCredit Group, owner of the Archive, which granted it on loan to Fondazione Roma for thirty years.

This is very heterogeneous documentation, both in materials (parchment, paper, iconographic, photographic and audiovisual), and in typology (bulls, briefs, letters patent, rescripts, chirographs, civil and criminal court sentences, wills, minutes, correspondence, registers, accounting books, bank notes, floor plans and posters), and in contents (statutory norms, balance sheets, pawn requests, legal transactions, purchase and sale deeds, payment orders, artisan and clerical work contracts, public securities, petitions and indulgence concessions), ranging from Latin to Italian and from the most ancient writings to print.

The Historical Archive has been housed in Palazzo Sciarra Colonna, already the seat of Fondazione Roma. The Palace’s construction was promoted in the second half of the sixteenth century by the Sciarra family, a branch of the Colonna family that held the principality of Carbognano. The building, which for the beauty of its portal was included among the four wonders of Rome, was restructured in the eighteenth century at the impulse of Cardinal Prospero Colonna, with the contribution of the famous architect Luigi Vanvitelli.

The documents are preserved within a shelving structure to constantly ensure compliance with protection and conservation standards. On the ground floor, a large room has been set up for welcoming scholars, supported in document analysis and research activities by a series of computer and paper consultation services and tools, including a specialized library equipped with repertoires, monographs and periodicals, still being expanded, to contribute, through future publications, to broadening the knowledge framework on both credit institutions.

Adjacent to the study area is an exhibition space that, through fourteen display cases, houses a selection of documents and memorabilia ordered according to chronological criteria, to offer a journey back in time beginning in the sixteenth century.

It starts with the Sacred Monte della Pietà which, founded in Rome in 1539 by Giovanni Calvo (from Calvi in Corsica), was born as a pawn credit instrument for the less affluent. Its institution was decreed by Paul III Farnesethrough a Bull in which the institute’s legitimacy was reaffirmed. The founding act also established that the Entity be administered by a Congregation formed by religious and lay leaders, with respectively lifetime and annual elective positions.

From both original and printed specimens of the successive statutory reforms of 1617 and 1767, signed by Cardinals Pietro Aldobrandini and Giuseppe Maria Castelli, it can be seen how many and which innovations profoundly affected the Monte’s credit system. Thanks to the establishment of the Banco dei depositi (Deposit Bank), the Entity could benefit from a fixed income that served to strengthen pawn credit activity with the consequent reduction of interest rates.

Subsequently, Paul V Borghese authorized the Institute first to manage agricultural credit in favor of Lazio landowners for amounts between one and two thousand scudi, and then to grant even considerable loans with a low percentage of return and backed by precious items to religious institutions and Roman noble families.

Initially intended for the needy, the Institute began to acquire both jewels (for whose appraisal a physical research laboratory was created which, as evidenced by photographic reproductions, gathered expert gemologists, quickly becoming a leader in the sector), and important artworks that, according to inventories, contributed to enriching the Monte’s Gallery. The Foundation’s artistic heritage, increased by a series of acquisitions, houses on the second floor of Palazzo Sciarra-Colonna the main corpus of the Art Collection that develops, through eight rooms, in a pictorial overview from the 15th to the 20th century.

The intensification of pawn credit activities and deposit collection highlighted the need to guarantee the Institute adequate premises, intended for housing specialized personnel and safeguarding the huge and precious objects left as loan guarantees.

Piazza della Chiavica di S. Lucia, Piazza San Salvatore in Lauro and Via Aracoeli were some of the temporary accommodations of the Monte which only in 1585, by will of Sixtus V Peretti, had its first effective headquarters at Palazzo Salimei in Via dei Coronari n. 32 (renamed “Monte Vecchio”), and remained there until 1604 when it was transferred to the then Piazza S. Martinello.

The building intended to house the Monte underwent successive expansions for which surrounding spaces occupied by houses and the church of S. Salvatore in Campo were exploited. Enriched with the splendid Chapel of the Archconfraternity, an expression of baroque art, it became the Institute’s definitive headquarters. An interesting architectural-urban path that can be reconstructed through the rich documentation, complete with registers and floor plans, preserved in the Archive.

Beyond the Deposit Bank, the Institute also promoted careful patrimonial investment policies consisting of both public securities and urban and rural properties, partly also coming from hereditary bequests and donations, including estates near Perugia, Civitavecchia, Allumiere and Corneto (today’s Tarquinia), which the Entity purchased in 1835 from the Reverend Apostolic Chamber.

The consequent capital increase allowed the Institute to increase its credit volume which especially had the merit of removing much space in the loan market from private banks, until reaching their suppression in 1682.

Born, therefore, as a “Monte dei prestiti” (Loan Bank), focused on institutionalized credit policy marked by charitable intentions, over the centuries the Entity acquired a series of functions that contributed to carving out a main role in pontifical administration. The Monte was also given full jurisdictional autonomy, both civil and criminal, for crimes committed by employees regarding the Institute’s interests through the Motu of August 21, 1560, with which the cardinal protector was designated as ordinary and perpetual judge (as evidenced by the procedural registers preserved in the Archive, of clear interest for reconstructing the jurisprudence of the era and its connections with canonical law).

The consolidated relationship with the Pontifical State meant that the political and financial crisis occurring with events caused by the French Revolution affected the Entity’s activities, which resumed after the fall of the Roman Republic at the impulse of Cardinal Aurelio Roverella.

Following the birth of the Kingdom of Italy, the Monte was placed under commissariat in 1871 and the dissolution of the Pontifical Administration was sanctioned along with the subsequent establishment of the new arrangement in a transition era of which the Archive offers important testimonies. After the provisional administration period ended, the Institute’s pawn credit activity was confirmed, to which savings and investment services were added, until the Monte was incorporated into the Cassa di Risparmio di Roma, whose individual phases can be followed through the minutes preserved in the Historical Archive.

Similarly to the charitable criteria that distinguished the Monte’s centuries-long credit activity, the Cassa di Risparmioproposed itself as an institute intent on spreading solidarity ideals through mutual assistance of the less affluent classes, instilling in them the culture of saving and the spirit of providence.

According to the statute, the Entity was born as a private joint-stock company. It, at the impulse of one hundred members including prelates, representatives of finance, entrepreneurship and Roman patrician families, obtained approval from Gregory XVI Cappellari with the Rescript of June 20, 1836 which, together with the regulation for the institution, in a printed edition, stands out in the Exhibition Hall.

More than the initial corporate share, it was the financiers’ prestige that instilled confidence in small and future savers. Thanks to their contribution, a substantial deposit collection was supported, with exponential growth recorded when the Cassa opened to the public at the President’s Palace, Francesco Borghese. He made his residence available to prevent rental and facility setup expenses from weighing on the corporate budget. This arrangement lasted for many years until in 1862 the Institute decided to identify itself in its own building reality by purchasing, from the Archospital of San Giacomo in Augusta, a vast block between Piazza Sciarra, Via del Caravita and Via Montecatini. Here the new headquarters was built, designed by architect Antonio Cipolla (1820-1874), and inaugurated on November 29, 1874.

Chosen in 1948 as the location for some scenes of one of the masterpieces of Italian neorealist cinema, Bicycle Thievesby Oscar winner Vittorio De Sica (of which the Archive preserves the thank-you letter for the collaboration reserved), the building maintained its role as residence until 1970 when all offices were transferred to the adjacent Palazzo Sciarra-Colonna.

The new Institute’s credit activities, over time, were marked by Risorgimento events which, with continuous fluctuating trends, determined both worrying and substantial withdrawals and important growth in the real estate sector.

Considerable managerial changes were introduced in the statute approved in 1891 with the so-called “organic law,”which tended to regulate the arrangement of Savings Banks that transformed into ordinary credit institutions with commercial characteristics, destined to depend on the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce and defined as providence entities, whose full autonomy was recognized.

Having overcome various nineteenth-century economic crises, with the new century the Institute launched a development and consolidation policy through capillary expansion in the Lazio territory, acquiring management of special services such as tax collection offices, municipal and provincial, and the exercise of agricultural, land, artisan and pawn credit, activated after the incorporation of the Monte di Pietà di Roma (followed in 1941 by the Monti of Velletri, Frascati and Veroli). But it was certainly the deposit collection activity that made the Cassa excel in the Roman banking system and establish itself at national and international levels.

Over a century of history that underwent an important turning point with Law July 30, 1990, n.218 (Official Gazette August 6, 1990, n.182), the so-called “Amato Law” which determined the Institute’s spin-off into two realities: the banking company, which flowed into Banco di Santo Spirito and subsequently merged with Banco di Roma, giving rise to Banca di Roma and incorporated into UniCredit, and the philanthropic soul inherited and preserved by Fondazione Roma, which has continued to support the reference territory in the main welfare sectors, perpetuating those principles that animated the founders of the Sacred Monte della Pietà and the Cassa di Risparmio, whose memory is today preserved in the Historical Archive.