Vajont Archives and Neapolitan Public Banks candidate to UNESCO’s Memory of the World

PARIS, DECEMBER 3 – The “Vajont Processual Archives” and the “Historic Archive of the Neapolitan Public Banks (1573-1809)” are the two Italian nominations for the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register. Both files have been sent to the Memory of the World Programme Secretariat in Paris for a final evaluation.

On the initiative of Spain, which played a key role in the Spain-Italy transnational candidacy, the Simón Ruiz Archive in Medina del Campo and the Datini Archive in Prato (both invaluable sources for the history of intra-European trade during the Renaissance) also submitted their joint proposal.

The Vajont Archives are based in Belluno and document the long trial occurred after the disaster of 9 October1963. Nearly two thousand people died when a landslide from Mount Toc precipitated into the Vajont artificial dam’s water reservoir. The dam held, but the water’s overflow destroyed villages in the valley, including Longarone. The Neapolitan Historical Archives, on the other hand, collects the transactions made by eight Neapolitan public banks between the sixteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, and constitutes a unique heritage of the modern ages’ historical knowledge in the European context and beyond.

If the nominations are accepted, they will join the eight Italian coveted recognitions (individual or joint) already included in the International Memory of the World Register: the Malatesta Novello Library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana Collection, the Lucca’s Historical Diocesan Archives, the Newsreels and photographs of the LUCE National Institute, the Codex purpureus Rossanensis, the Collection of Barbanera Almanacs, the works of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún and Antonio Carlos Gomes: composer of the two worlds. (@giorgiodelgallo)