Polo del ‘900 launches 9centRo, a digital archive of 20th-century Italian history

The Polo del ‘900 in Turin has launched 9centRo, an open-source digital platform aggregating the cultural heritage of its 19 partner institutions. The archive includes 85,000 documents, 12,000 photographs, and 4,000 posters covering Italian 20th-century history from the birth of the Republic to the 1968 protests. The project was announced by director Alessandro Bollo in a recent interview and became reality after two years of work. The Polo del ‘900 is a Participatory Foundation established in early 2016 by the City of Turin, the Piedmont Region, and the Compagnia di San Paolo. The platform addresses the fragmentation of digital archives across different institutions, which had heterogeneous databases and outdated systems. It integrates 9 linear kilometers of books and archival documents, 130,000 photographs, 21,000 posters, and 53,000 audiovisual items, of which 400,000 documents were already digitized but in a non-uniform manner, located in the San Daniele and San Celso buildings within the Juvarrian complex of the Quartieri Militari. Archivists from the Polo worked with the Turin heritage agency Promemoria to develop 9centRo, balancing the autonomy of each institution with the integration of their collections, now freely accessible to all. The platform also aims to engage artists, as participatory archiving can offer them a source of inspiration and material.