Archive

The collections of documents, correspondence, and books constitute the Historical Archive of the Brivio Sforza, Barbiano di Belgiojoso d'Este and Trivulzio families. A valuable collection formed over the centuries, which today the Foundation promotes through initiatives aimed at its preservation, study, and dissemination.

Brivio Sforza family

The Brivio Sforza Documentary Fund collects materials produced by the family between 1251 and the 20th century, reorganized in the 19th century. It includes a historical core of 124 folders, initially cataloged by the archivist Guido Colombo, author of the "Rubrica Archivio Brivio Sforza," which was destroyed in 1943. The fund includes series dedicated to Properties, Inheritances, Families, and Property Acts, as well as the Miscellanea Brivio Sforza, curated by Annibale Brivio Sforza, and the Correspondence, with chronologically ordered letters from various family members.

Barbiano di Belgiojoso d’Este family

The Barbiano di Belgioioso Primogeniture Archive (13th-19th century) includes about 800 archival units, divided into three sections: Inheritance of Prince Alberico (473 folders), Count Ludovico (199 folders), and Princess Anna Ricciarda d'Este (92 folders), according to the division document of 1831.

Well-preserved but lacking recent reorganization, the archive includes folders transferred in the 1840s-1850s to Piede B, a separate section. In 1941, Don Annibale Brivio Sforza and Donna Marianna Trivulzio donated the diplomatic and military correspondence of Count Ludovico Barbiano di Belgioioso (1750-1789) to the State Archive of Milan, which is now dispersed.

Trivulzio family

The Trivulzio Archive Fund, now preserved at the Brivio Sforza Foundation, consists of four main series: Codices Trivulzio, Biblioteca Trivulzio, Miscellanea Trivulzio, and Carteggio Trivulzio. Originally kept at the Villa Belgiojoso in Merate since 1958, the archive was reorganized and cataloged in 2014.

The Codices Trivulzio series includes 17 manuscript volumes, both parchment and paper, related to the Trivulzio family, of which 15 are described in the catalog by Giulio Porro (1884). The Biblioteca Trivulzio and Miscellanea Trivulzio series contain original documentation and studies by Emilio Motta, historian, bibliographer, and curator of the Trivulziana Library. Finally, the Carteggio Trivulzio series gathers letters of the family, preserved by Marianna Trivulzio Brivio Sforza.