State Archives now accelerate on digital: record accesses and revenues

Online visits increased by over 600% in five years. Digitisation is profoundly transforming the relationship between citizens and the documentary heritage of the State Archives. The national system closes 2025 with the best economic performance ever: revenues from additional services reached €1.19 million, bringing the cumulative growth over the last two years to +55%.

The data describe a dynamic common to several European cultural institutions engaged in the transition to digital fruition models, but with an acceleration that in the Italia case appears particularly marked. After the 46.8% leap recorded between 2023 and 2024 - when revenues went from 771 thousand to 1.13 million euros - the more contained increase in 2025 (+5.3%) signals the entry into a stabilisation phase. Among the revenue items, image reproduction rights represented the most dynamic component: doubled between 2023 and 2024 (from 186 thousand to 417 thousand euro), they settled in 2025 at 266 thousand euro, a value still 43% higher than two years earlier. Which, by the way, demonstrates the economic significance of cultural heritage images that absolutely must be preserved.

"The growth in online accesses, the increase in financial profitability, the expansion of visitor traffic on the institutional site and its social pages, and the increase in general visibility outline a transformation that is now complete in the relationship with the public and the other components of the cultural heritage," explains the General Director of Archives, Antonio Tarasco. "Attractive places and no longer Indian reserves of isolated scholars, capable of generating, at the same time, both cultural and economic value".

Everything rests on an expansion of the digital audience. Accesses to national archival portals reached 3.69 million in 2025, an increase of 22.7% year-on-year. The medium-term trajectory is eloquent considering the fact that online visits barely exceeded 500,000 in 2020. According to Tarasco, "the data seem to confirm a renewed interest in archival heritage, which in turn is affected by a new way of communicating. It is the archives, this time, that are coming out of the archives and trying to anticipate and grasp the public's curiosity".

The main driving force is 'Antenati', the portal dedicated to genealogical research, which holds digitised versions of parish registers, civil status records and civil registration documents from the State Archives throughout the peninsula. It recorded 1.8 million accesses and 267 million pages consulted, numbers that place it firmly among the continent's reference genealogical platforms. The institutional information systems also experienced significant increases. The Siusa, which censuses archival heritage preserved outside the State Archives - foundations, local authorities, ecclesiastical archives, companies - exceeded for the first time one million accesses, with a 47 per cent leap. The Sias, on the other hand, concerning the fonds preserved in the State Archives, rose from 233 thousand to 608 thousand accesses: an increase of 160 per cent, accompanied by 2.8 million pages consulted. Specialised platforms fully confirm the trend. "Carte da legare", dedicated to the documentation of former psychiatric hospitals, exceeded 100 thousand hits. "The Digital Archive", which has only been active since the second half of the year, has collected 12,000 users and 313,000 consulted pages in just over six months of operation.