State Property and Archives Directorate seek private partners for Palazzo Senato in Milan

With a call for development concessions - published today - the Agenzia del Demanio and the Ministry of Culture aim to involve private operators in the management of two spaces in the historic Palazzo Senato building to be used as a cafeteria, co-working, reading room, restaurant and exhibition hall.

The announcement of the public procedure was made today in the presence of the director of the State Property Agency, Alessandra dal Verme, and the director general for Archives of the Ministry of Culture, Antonio Tarasco. The initiative is part of the Framework Agreement between the two institutions, which is based on an innovative vision of the State Archives, imagined as 'people's places', where the consultation and exhibition of documentary evidence from the past is integrated with new services. The State Archives thus become a cultural, open and attractive space.

For the redevelopment of Palazzo Senato, the choice has been made to use the redevelopment concession for up to 50 years (in accordance with the provisions of decree law 351/2001): it is possible to consult tender documentation and the information memorandum on the Agenzia del Demanio website and participate in the call for bids by noon on 13 October.
The proposals will be evaluated on the basis of qualitative elements - recovery and reuse, return for the territory, environmental sustainability and energy efficiency of the project - fee and duration of the concession.

This is not an isolated initiative. On the contrary, since a few days, investments in digital and the enhancement of public-private partnerships have been the pillars of the 'Create value, invest with us' initiative, the new digital platform of the Italian Public Property Agency, easily accessible online, which, for the time being, contains an initial selection of properties - just under 400 - distributed throughout the country and chosen with the aim of creating synergies between the interests of market operators, both profit and non-profit, and the Agency's real estate offer, directing operations towards urban enhancement and redevelopment.

"The State Archives are transformed into cultural centres open to the public, meeting places where memory and innovation are combined," said the director of the State Property Agency, Alessandra dal Verme. The public archives enter into a relationship with the city and, through partnership operations, offer not only rooms open for consultation, multifunctional and digital, but also green spaces and recreational places. Citizens, who are usually far from the archives 'reserved for scholars', now have the opportunity to go through the culture contained in the archives and discover the numerous documents and testimonies of the city's history'.