Archival Heritage

The State Archives of Palermo preserves the documentation of the Kingdom of which the city was the capital, like other State Archives which are located in the former capitals of pre-unification states. 

Specifically, it holds the surviving records of statal central bureaus of the Kingdom of Sicily (under the rule of Normans, Swabians, Angevins, Aragoneses), of the vice Kingdom (since 1412) and of the lieutenancy of the Kingdom of Naples (since 1816). Since the Unification of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, the State Archives of Palermo started to hold the records issued by the peripheral State bureaus.   

Another substantial part of the records is made up by the deeds of notaries who acted in the district of Palermo between the 14^th and the 20^th century. Also remarkable are the archives of suppressed religious corporations that were confiscated by the State since 1866 and the private archives of families and individuals. Among these, there are 6167 parchments of the Diplomatico.  

For a general overview of the heritage preserved in the State Archives of Palermo, see the volume about the Institute in the “Guida generale degli Archivi di Stato italiani”, published in 1986. For information about archival complexes deposited after that year, please search on the webpage Strumenti di ricerca or ask to the research rooms managers. 

Link to Access tools – Complessi documentari e strumenti di ricerca 

General bibliography 

• Guida generale degli Archivi di Stato italiani. Palermo  
• Sistema Guida Generale degli Archivi di Stato 
• Inventario ufficiale del Grande Archivio di Sicilia, Palermo 1861 
• G. Travali, I documenti con firme autografe esposti nell’Archivio di Stato, Palermo 1892 
• G. Cosentino, Manuale storico-archivistico, ms., 1909 (AS Palermo, Miscellanea archivistica I, 278)  
• A. Lombardo, Guida alle fonti relative alla Sicilia esistenti negli Archivi di Stato italiani per il periodo 1816-1860, Roma 1961 (QRAS, 10), pp. 20-37 
• A. Baviera Albanese, Diritto pubblico e istituzioni amministrative in Sicilia. I, Le fonti, Roma 1974 

[2024 ed. FDP, FG, tr. EC]

Ultima modifica: 21 Febbraio 2024