Intesa Sanpaolo backs the digitisation of Italian news agency ANSA’s archive

Italy’s largest news agency, the Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA), is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year. To mark the occasion, Intesa Sanpaolo is backing the agency’s extensive digitisation project, which will see it digitise its more than 800,000 archival images by 2027.

Intesa Sanpaolo has also backed a new exhibition in Rome titled “Eighty Years of History. Eighty years of ANSA” which opened on January 16. Intesa Sanpaolo’s Chairman, Gian Maria Gros-Pietro, attended the opening of the new exhibition, which was also attended by Sergio Mattarella, the President of the Italian Republic.

Speaking at the exhibition opening, Gros-Pietro underlined the importance of preserving ANSA’s archive, emphasising that the new digitisation project will make recent Italian history as told by the agency's photographers fully accessible.

“Beyond its banking function, Intesa Sanpaolo is a major backer of social and cultural affairs in Italy,” Gros-Pietro said in a speech at the opening. “We believe in the value of history, and the documentation that is preserved in historical archives. So when ANSA came to Intesa for support for its new digital photographic archiving project, we welcomed the proposal with enthusiasm.” 

The new exhibition in Rome, like the entire archiving project, aims to showcase the historical, cultural and social heritage that these images represent to the general public. Visitors to the exhibition’s collection of photographs can observe eighty years of news, history and events that have shaped Italy and the world, from the Second World War to today.

Intesa Sanpaolo’s own historical archive also features many photographs, which tell the story of some of the Italian banks that merged into the banking Group over time. Intesa Sanpaolo’s archive tells a story of the banking Group’s evolution, as well as the stories of individuals, families and companies through recent Italian history.

In 2015, Intesa Sanpaolo also acquired the Archivio Publifoto — a collection of around seven mln mostly black and white photographs documenting current events, politics, customs, society, culture, sport, landscape and architecture — taken in Italy and abroad between the 1930s and the 1990s.

The Publifoto archive’s headquarters are at the Gallerie d'Italia-Turin, Intesa Sanpaolo’s own museum dedicated to photography.

Photo credits: Eighty years of history, eighty years of ANSA | Gian Maria Gros-Pietro, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Intesa Sanpaolo, during his speech on the occasion of the exhibition for the 80th anniversary of ANSA's foundation, at the Maxxi Museum, Rome, 15 January 2025. ANSA/ ETTORE FERRARI