The museum and archival collections of the Mansutti Museum Foundation include some 2500 insurance policies, collected worldwide, which include very old specimens dating back to the 16th century, when these contracts were still drawn up by hand. Over 300 posters, all with the common denominator of insurance. The poster not only has an informative function, as the cries of the 1800’s had, but also takes on the value of testimony in the history of the figurative arts and in the history of customs with which it has such an immediate and unscrupulous relationship that it is able, through the evolution of the message, to document the development of the insurance sector in a very effective way.
637 fire plates, the result of the donation of a well-known scholar and collector. These plates, whose use dates back to the 17th century, were affixed on the insured buildings to identify who was responsible for putting out the fire in the building and, only later, to advertise the name of the insurance company. The rarity of this collection lies in the fact that this practice has long since gone out of use and as a result these plates are now hard to find.
The Library has over 6000 volumes of insurance history, manuscripts and printed books from the 16th century to the present day. The collection of this precious book material began over fifty years ago and since then has continued in a constant search for texts from the past, combined with a continuous update on contemporary publications on insurance history.
