Historical Archive

The Historical Archive preserves and enhances documents of the Municipal Administration of Catania issued for at least forty years, constituting an indispensable source of research for anyone who wants to investigate and reason about the Catania past.

The construction dates back to 1352, while the oldest document kept before the 1944 fire was a payment warrant dating back to 4 September 1414. The “Eredi Verga” Family Archive is also kept, which collects letters, correspondence, judicial documents, book accounting, and other various documentation, accumulated in almost two centuries of daily life of the writer’s family and received by donation to the Municipality of Catania, as well as original films by the Films of the Actor Catanese Angelo Musco (1934-193).

The original core of the documentary heritage is represented by what survived the fire of the Town Hall, which occurred on December 14, 1944, by the periodic payments and the acquisitions made in archives and libraries, between 1957 and 1974, by the Commission for the Reconstitution of the Municipal Historical Archive with the intent to restore to the city, at least partially memory of the disappeared civic archive. In this regard, the reproduction of hundreds of recordings taken from the Royal Chancellery of Sicily and the Riveli of Catania, as well as the purchase of the “Giuliana” of the Rizzari brothers of the mid-seventeenth century, as well as rare and valuable editions.

The Historical Archive provides the public with a bibliographic section of local history along with a selection of citizen newspapers and periodicals. There are also thematic exhibitions, seminars, guided tours, educational itineraries for schools and universities.

Since 1998 the Municipal Historical Archive has been operating in Via Sant’Agata 2, in the former church of S. Caterina da Siena (known as S. Caterina del Rosario), already annexed to the convent of the Dominican Fathers (now the State Archives) . The Institute was built after the earthquake of 1693 and the troubled events of the place seem to reflect the hardships suffered by the documentary patrimony in it today kept.