The inventory of the third part of the Archives belonging to the former Institute for the Middle and Far East (IsMEO), edited by Dr Alessandra Bonsignorio, is available on the web page of the Historical Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. This release, part of the reorganisation and inventorying project started in 2023, includes a total of 58 envelopes, dated between 1965 and 1968.
The second half of the 1960s was a phase of slight decline in the scientific and teaching activities of IsMEO. In fact, the funds allocated as a contribution by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were drastically reduced and some of the Institute’s offices, including the historical one in Turin, were forced to close. Geopolitical tension in Asia also affected IsMEO’s programmes, especially in the field of archaeology. First of all, the Indo-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir in 1965 imposed an interruption of missions in the Swat valley for an entire season, while the climate of growing instability in Afghanistan made it increasingly complicated to obtain permits for excavations and the export of artefacts for study purposes.
Collaboration relations with Iran, instead, remained fruitful, despite the death of Enrico Mattei and the signs of the then looming and irreversible decline of the Pahlavi dynasty. Starting in 1964, IsMEO’s headquarters in Palazzo Brancaccio, Rome, hosted the Italian-Iranian Association, inaugurated the following year under the high patronage of President of the Republic Gronchi. In the autumn of 1967, the successful excavation campaign in Shahr-i Sokhta also began (the documents in the Archives include a certificate of presence of Maurizio Tosi, Head of the IsMEO archaeological mission in Shahr-i Sokhta, 1967, picture in the gallery) and only a few months later, in May 1968, the project for the night lighting and restoration of some historical buildings in Isfahan and Persepolis was adopted: in the cover picture, the Hundred Columns Palace in Persepolis in a photograph of the time.
From the mid-1960s, the IsMEO Restoration Centre went through a period full of ferment and important achievements. In addition to the programmes undertaken on Persian soil, the restoration of Shah Jahan’s Mosque in the Babur Gardens was completed in Kabul (in one of the pictures in the gallery, a section of the Mosque designed by architect Benito Carlo Bono can be seen), but it was especially in Ghazni that the Centre’s greatest efforts
were concentrated. In the former capital of the Ghaznavid dynasty, in fact, the Royal Palace of Sultan Mas’ud III was brought to light and restored, while the Mausoleum of Abdur Razaq, located in the suburb of Rauza, was the protagonist of a plan to convert it into an Archaeological Museum, designed by architect Eugenio Galdieri. The most interesting documents kept in the Archives included a photograph showing Giuseppe Tucci, Empress Farah Diba and Vittore Branca at the inauguration of the exhibition of Italian miniatures in Tehran (1967) and the cover of Giuseppe Tucci’s book Tibet, Land of Snows in the Indian edition of Oxford Book & Stationery.
