PRESS RELEASE (10/11/2016)
Saturday, November 12, a Loano, to the 4 p.m., at Council Chamber in Doria Palace, a conference entitled “The Secret Archives of the Vatican.”, organized by the’UNITRE of Loano under the auspices of the Municipality of Loano.
It will be the Prof. Antonio Arecco to lead the public inside the Vatican's Secret Archives, which although it retains that name, since 1881-since Pope Leo XIII opened its doors to scholars-has become one of the most important and celebrated centers of historical research in the world.
The Secret Archives holds the acts and documents pertaining to the government of the Church. The present name “Vatican Secret Archives” is first attested in the mid-1700s and today, as then, qualifies the private archives (secretum) of the pope, who personally exercises supreme and exclusive jurisdiction there.
The documentary patrimony preserved in its vast repositories covers a chronological span of about twelve centuries (8th-XXth centuries), consists of more than 600 archival fonds and spans 85 linear kilometers of shelving, located, among other things, in the Bunker, a two-story room carved out in the underground of the Vatican Museums' Cortile della Pigna.
The prof Antonio Arecco, graduated in Literature from the University of Genoa in 1950, taught literary subjects for 40 years and was a correspondent of the “Century XIX” from Loano for more than 10 years.
He has written the history of various towns around Loano, that of the Diocese of Albenga, now Albenga-Imperia, of which the third volume from the mid-1600s to the present is being printed.
Edits the third page of the monthly “Journal of Loano” since its founding.
In 2013, edited by UNITRE of Loano of which he is a founding member, he published the volume “The Nimbalt Valley with Loano and Verzi Boissano.”.
