Archivio di Stato di Venezia is a research and conservation institute of the MiC, located in the San Polo district and belonging to the former convent complex of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.
The convent
The Franciscan convent has its origins in the XIII
century (1236), according to legend at the behest of San Francesco
himself; it continued to improve and expand during the century and in
the following ones, with land reclamation and new buildings, until in
the fifteenth century the structure that the area still possesses
stabilized.
This was possible thanks to a succession of bequests and
offers made by illustrious Venetians, starting with the Badoer family,
historic owner of the land on which it stands.
In the eighteenth
century restorations and new decorations of the cloisters and the
convent were carried out.
The Frari convent had an illustrious
history that lasted until 1810, when Napoleon's intervention brought
about the end of the religious history of this centuries-old Franciscan
settlement.
The archive
The state archive of the city of
Venice opened here in 1815, initially as the "General Archive",
following the suppression, in the early 19th century (by Napoleonic
edict), of the orders housed in the Frari convent. Therefore, all the
ancient documents from the most prestigious archives of the Venetian
palaces begin to gather in this structure, previously the site of the
cells where the friars lived and adapted to the new needs by the work of
Jacopo Chiodo.
The complex consists of several buildings arranged around two
cloisters adjacent to each other and adjacent to the Basilica dei Frari.
The first cloister, the one accessible to the public, is called the
"external cloister of the Trinity", also known for the presence of
burials with the name of "cloister of the dead"; the second, more
internal and intimate, is the "cloister of Sant'Antonio", annexed to the
small "convent of San Nicolò" (called "il conventino").
The
"cloister of the Trinity" has a square plan and protrudes from the
convent complex, on the faces of which it forms a long terrace; the four
sides of the cloister have round arches, in the center a well surmounted
by an arch. The "cloister of Sant'Antonio" is smaller and has a
trapezoidal plan; it constitutes a continuous portico with round arches,
in the center of which there is another well embellished by the
seventeenth-century sculpture of the saint to whom it is dedicated.
Inside, the large "chapter room" is of relevance, in which frescoes were
preserved, now lost, due to the deterioration that had already affected
it in the Franciscan era.
The entrance to the Archive is in Campo
dei Frari, on the right side of the facade of the Basilica. However, it
is on the north side of the complex that an enormous structure appears
with three high floors and a neoclassical setting, with the inscription
STATE ARCHIVE depicted in large letters. This facade, developed in
length, is on three levels and tripartite, of great importance and
sobriety: the two "noble floors" of the building are characterized by
long rows of rectangular single-lancet windows, which in the central
part are separated by pilasters ending in the massive architrave
surmounted by a large pediment containing the effigy.
On the
ground floor, seven large round arched portals (of which the first from
the left has been walled up) provide access to the building, which today
is, externally, in conditions of limited degradation.
The documentary heritage conserved in the Venetian archive is
immense, ranging from the origins of the city to the contemporary age.
According to data from the official website, the State Archives contain
over 70 km of shelves full of documents relating to the entire history
of the Republic of Venice and the entire world with which it had
political, economic and cultural relations. Furthermore, the Archives
conserve the deeds of the administrative and judicial bodies which
succeeded the Serenissima in the Napoleonic period, in the
Lombard-Venetian period, in the Kingdom of Italy and in the Italian
Republic.
In 2006, the State Archives of Venice and the National
Research Council of Florence defined the specification of an information
system «for the creation, management and consultation via the web of
images and descriptions of documentary series».
This model was
subsequently adapted to the requirements of the Milan State Archives to
become an inventory, research and access tool «to the single cadastral
cartographic documentary units and related images».