L’Espresso Opens Its Digital Archive: Seventy Years of Italian History Just a Click Away
L’Espresso, in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo, lifts the curtain on the project to digitize the weekly magazine’s entire historical archive, with the first phase launching on Friday, June 26, and an initiative that highlights the legacy that of the magazine founded in 1955, which spans seventy years of investigations, reports, and covers that chronicle the country’s transformations.
The project begins with the online publication of the most recent issues, from 2025 to 2016. Subsequently, approximately every 45 days, a new decade’s worth of issues will be made available, until the entire archive is complete in the spring of 2027. Alongside the original materials, the section “Seventy Years of Italy Through L’Espresso” will also debut—an editorial space featuring over one hundred articles by the magazine’s editorial staff.
Each article, in particular, takes inspiration from a historic cover and reinterprets it from a contemporary perspective, exploring the major themes covered by the publication’s journalism: from civil rights to environmental battles, from investigations into organized crime to economic transformations, and on to culture and innovation.
The archive is accessible on the lespresso.it website, in the dedicated section. Behind this new digital platform lies a physical space that preserves the newspaper’s legacy, featuring prominent columnists such as Scalfari, Biagi, Bocca, Cederna, and Eco; investigations into the Piazza Fontana bombing, the P2 Masonic lodge, and the Moro case; and the civil rights struggles that have shaped the country.
“With this project, made possible by our collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo, we are giving back to the country seventy years of Italian journalism,” said Emilio Carelli, editor-in-chief of L’Espresso. A paper legacy that becomes a collective memory available to everyone: the history of Italy told week after week, with its investigations, its key figures, and its covers. For too long, these pages could only speak to those who physically accessed them; from today, they are reborn, ready to be consulted by everyone.”.
Barbara Costa, Head of the Intesa Sanpaolo Historical Archive, echoed this sentiment: “We wholeheartedly support this project to preserve and digitize the archive of the weekly magazine L’Espresso—a strategic investment in the preservation and dissemination of the nation’s memory. For Intesa Sanpaolo, this commitment is part of a long-standing effort to promote our documentary heritage—particularly journalistic archives—which are recognized as a living source of Italian history.”
“This focus,” Costa added, “stems from the experience gained through our own Historical Archive and, more recently, through the archive of the photojournalism agency Publifoto: over 20 kilometers of documents and seven million photographs that chronicle the lives of families and businesses that have grown thanks to the more than 600 banks that make up the Group’s lineage. A heritage that we continue to make increasingly accessible, in the belief that knowledge of the past is an essential tool for understanding the present and building the future.”
