The Archive, for the quality and quantity of the materials preserved, for the specificity of the subjects and the relevance of the photographers represented, is among the top historical photographic collections in Italy.
It was established at the beginning of the last century and today its heritage amounts to about 850,000 original photographs dating from 1840 to the present day.
The images, by important Italian and foreign photographers, show us, through the most diverse and rare printing and shooting techniques, aspects of social history and customs, portraits of famous characters, natural landscapes, urban transformations, especially of Milan (rebuilding of the Sforza Castle), precious testimonies of the artistic heritage, series dedicated to travels in the East in the nineteenth century (Ottoman Empire, India, China, Japan), to historical events and reportage (Roman Republic of 1849, Crimean War of 1855, Milanese uprisings of 1898).
Among the collections of greatest historical importance are the Luca Beltrami Collection, the Iconographic Collection, the Lamberto Vitali collection. The Archive is currently involved in projects for the conservation, restoration, scientific cataloging, digital acquisition of images to allow better usability of the heritage also through computer consultation.
The photographic collections are entirely and daily accessible to the public in the Consultation Room which periodically hosts conferences and exhibitions on the history of photography. The Archive preserves and catalogs a collection of specialized publications and periodicals, whose catalog is now consultable within the OPAC of the Lombardy Regional Hub of the SBN network (National Library Service).
The book collection, in addition to specialized and often hard-to-find texts on the history and technique of photography, contains a rare collection of sales catalogs of nineteenth-century photographic studios (Alinari, Brogi, Anderson in particular).
