Historical Library

Anselmi Giorgio Ermanno

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Giorgio Ermanno Anselmi The Anselmi's archive's papers containts storical family's and personal documents of the senator. A wide part is dedicated to writings and notes on the subjects which represented the main interests of Giorgio Ermanno Anselmi in the field of public works: inland navigation, Nivolet's road, the establishment of the Gran Paradiso park. There's a tiny but precious collection of famous autograpghs including the dispatch with whom Napoleon Bonaparte tells the Count Tornafort, commander of the fort of Ceva, to surrender. The general was headquartered in Cherasco and was about to finish his first successful campaign in Italy. This is the tenor of the message: "Your army has been beaten in Mondovì, the lines behind the Stura have been strained, the city of Cherasco has surrendered, my siege artillery has arrived. Any resistance you made would be contrary to the laws of war, and would produce an unnecessary profusion of blood. Your strong dominated at 150 tenses away is not susceptible to any resistance. If, after 24 hours from this summons' notification, you haven't surrendered, I won't admit to capitulation and your garrison will be put to the sword. If the preservation of the city of Ceva, which will certainly be sacrificed to the fire of the batteries; if the salvation of the mighty ones you command interests you, sir, accept an honorable Capitulation and return to the instant. Bonaparte". The request was refused to the sender and only after the order of Vittorio Amedeo III, following the armistice signed in Cherasco, on 28 April the fort was delivered to the French who then provided to raze it to the ground, in 1800 (of the building, whose construction dates back to the middle of the sixteenth century, there are only a few ruins). Also interesting is the body of documents concerning the restoration of the church of San Giorgio in Valperga, of which Anselmi was the promoter in the years between 1937 and 1939. The Church, a fine example of medieval architecture, contains a pictorial cycle of the fifteenth century among the most important of the upper Canavese, whose traces were found under layers of lime by the restorer Pintor. Thanks to this discovery Anselmi managed to avoid the abandonment of the building and to obtain funding for the recovery. Among the archival materials of the Fund abound also correspondence, photographs, notes and minutes that form the book's documentary support La Chiesa di San Giorgio a Valperga, a data's collection , that Anselmi published at the Società Anonima Tipografica Editrice Torinese in 1943, and that still is an indispensable source of documentation on the church today.

Giorgio Ermanno Anselmi (1873-1961) was senator of the Kingdom of Italy and, in various forms, head of the Provincial Administration from 1920 to 1934. Elected President of the Deputation in 1920, he remained at the top of it until 1926, when a royal decree dissolved it together with the Council. Anselmi was then appointed Extraordinary Commissioner of the Agency until 1929, when the reform of the Provincial Administration wanted by Fascism repealed the Elective Assembly and replaced Deputation and Council with the institutes of the Dean and the Rectorate, of royal appointment. The first headmaster of the Province of Turin, in office from 1929 to 1934, was again Giorgio Anselmi. Provincial Deputation is the name that assumed the executive for the whole sixty years of Liberal Italy. It re-emerged in the first years after the Second World War to become the Provincial Council with 1951's elections.