Touring Club Italiano Archive

Since 2009 the Biblioteca del Progetto, the La Triennale library, has been home to the documentation centre of the Touring Club Italiano, with a collection of materials produced or acquired by TCI since 1894, the year of its foundation.

A vast range of materials covering a variety of subjects that go well beyond the world of tourism.

Library

The library contains works, published by the Association itself or in partnership with other institutions, in the form of magazines, books, guidebooks, maps, and atlases in various editions and reprints, as well as all publications – including those not for sale – for promotion, documentation, and relations with the press and with partners. This material is housed at La Triennale. The holdings include about 90,000 publications by other Italian and international publishers, mainly concerning geography, tourism, and art. There is a section with 1970s tourist brochures. The newspaper library contains about 200 historic publications.

Cartography library

Over 10,000 maps of the most important cities in Italy and the world, topographic maps, thematic maps, aeronautical charts, and a section of atlases of every country in the world. There are also more than 450 of the 5000 lithographic stones which were used for TCI maps during the inter-war period.

Historic Archive

This archive contains printed documents relating the institutional life of TCI. These include the holdings of original drawings and sketches for the Touring Club magazines, with over 1000 works drawn by the finest illustrators from the early years of the century to the 1960s, from Angoletta to Cappiello, Rubino to Ventura.

Photographic Archive

Over 400,000 black-and-white photographic prints show the landscapes of Italy and of many other countries, as well as a number of subjects in unknown locations but which have been the focus of interest for the Touring Club ever since it was set up: tourism, transport, roads, accommodation facilities, culture, fashion, traditions, folklore, and labour.

Society, landscapes, and monuments appear in a collection of images that is unique in Italy in terms of its size and the period it covers, from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s.

Another characteristic is the diversity of the photographers, who range from great artistic professionals to amateurs, TCI members, local and industrial photographers and press offices. This part of the archive is housed at La Triennale.

Special holdings

One of the finest holdings is the collection of photographs and plates from the Istituto Arti Grafiche di Bergamo, with thousands of plates illustrating the artistic heritage of Italy during a decade of photographic campaigns in the early twentieth century. They were made by IAGB for L’Italia artistica and Emporium magazines, under the direction of Corrado Ricci. One particular batch of photographs is that of the Silvio Saglio holdings, purchased in 1966 and consisting of the scholar’s own materials, with about 5000 prints and negatives of the mountains.

Documentation Centre – Library Tel. +39 – 02 8526421
Fax +39 – 02 8526554  Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. E' necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.  www.touringclub.it

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