Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura is an operating foundation, which, as an instrumental entity, is part of the Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo non-profit group, based in Torino. Its name contains in fact a historical reference to the year, precisely 1563, when the original Compagnia was born as a charitable brotherhood in the Counter Reformation context.
Among Fondazione 1563’s missions, one of the most important is the preservation and enhancement of the Historical Archives of Compagnia di San Paolo, three linear kilometres of documents stored in our state of the art venue, covering its more than 450 years of history.
These archives represent a very rich source both in economic and social history, above all for Turin and the former Savoy States, but with deep connections to many other Italian and European archives, and have been enriched through the years with the acquisition of archival and library collections of great value. Thanks to several years of work of our staff, by employing advanced technologies, ours is now an open and accessible digital archive: 8 archival collections inventoried for a total of over 66,000 archival units, more than 440,000 accessible and fully downloadable digital pages, flanked by digital images and versatile research tools.
On top of this architecture, our enhancement approach includes several research, public history and digital humanities projects, whose outputs can be exhibitions, publications, but also public lectures and brand heritage projects. Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura also aims at supporting young scholars working in the field of the humanities who wish to further their education and pursue careers in the academic and cultural sector, not only through its archives enhancement projects but also through the Humanities Programme, an initiative intended to reinforce the central role of the Humanities in today’s society.
Each year, within th Turin Humanities Programme (THP), Fondazione 1563 awards four two-year fellowships to international Junior Fellows working on global history topics in Turin. The goal is to facilitate intellectual exchange across disciplines while allowing young researchers in their crucial post-doc transition to fully concentrate on their projects that, alongside the traditional academic output, may include digital humanities productions and public history tools.
A key component of Fondazione 1563’s activity is favouring the training of new professionals holding competences both in the humanities and IT sector, to foster dialogue between two complementary worlds that need to collaborate to deliver succesful methodologies that can be applied to the management and enhancement of data and cultural heritage, but also to archives and digital libraries. The Baroque Programme is a research and advanced training programme of Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura motivated by the specificity of Baroque culture in Turin and Piedmont. The goal of the Programme is the expansion of Baroque studies from an interdisciplinary and international perspective through the activation of new research strands, updated on the current debate and attentive to the use of ICT technologies applied to the humanities.
The Programme aims to build qualified research opportunities for young scholars in the humanities.
Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura develops numerous Digital Humanities projects which can be explored on the institutional website.
Among the most relevant ones:
https://www.fondazione1563.it/archivio-storico-compagnia-san-paolo/brand-heritage-project/
https://mostrabarocco1937.fondazione1563.it/
https://le-case-e-le-cose.fondazione1563.it/le-vite/https://www.remembr-house.eu/