The Ansaldo Foundation of Genoa has been pursuing for forty years the axiom according to which work generates culture, culture generates work, dealing with the recovery, conservation and promotion of the business culture which constitutes a fundamental testimony for the history of our country. It shows how the world of work can generate socio-cultural value through a constant and articulated dialogue with the territories and their communities.

Ansaldo Foundation is a non-profit institution, open to the public, which is ideally placed between the world of culture and the world of business. It was formally established on February 18, 2000 - by Leonardo, the Municipality of Genoa, the Metropolitan City of Genoa and the Liguria Region - but it represents the result of a process that began in 1980, when the Ansaldo Historical Archive - the first archive of the company in Italy - whose patrimony was immediately declared of considerable historical interest by the Archival Superintendency and has always been freely available for consultation.

The patrimony that the Ansaldo Foundation deals with consists of historical, technical, entrepreneurial and organizational memories originating mainly from the companies and industries of the Ligurian territory , generated from the mid-nineteenth century to the early 2000s. To date there are more 100 collections made up of about 60,000 archival units . The materials are heterogeneous: over 800,000 images and photographs, more than 5,300 films, 4,500 volumes, periodicals and periodicals, and artifacts and relics of various kinds are also preserved .

In order to better manage and preserve the materials, in addition to the archives for paper documents, a photo library, a film library and a library have been established over time, located within the headquarters of the Foundation. The documents, even if they belong to the same fund, are therefore divided into four sections according to their nature.