It was Generali was born on 26 December 1831 and precisely in Trieste, at the time the city was a free port of the Austrian Empire, but also a place of innovation, experimentation as well as the exchange of cultures.
To remember the invention of the automatic policy dispenser, which aroused the enthusiasm of Matilde Serao. Writer nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature, she spoke about it in "Il Mattino" of Naples on 30 May 1899. For this innovation, Generali purchased the technology from a new company to install it in the main stations, in this way travelers could protect themselves against accidents when undertaking one trip and with the money-back guarantee automatically and instantly. A 10-cent coin was introduced into the vending machine and a policy was obtained which offered the bearer protection against any accidents contracted while travelling, by train or steamboat. This type of vending machine is now present in the Archive.
In 1836, Generali also introduced insurance that covered hail damage. To overcome the difficulty of establishing tariffs and premiums adequate to the damage, to better understand the study of atmospheric phenomena, he collaborated from 1881 with the Central Meteorological Office of Rome.
Other examples are the reclamations, between 1851 and 1917, building the banks of the Livenza river and a system of ditches and canals to expel the water using dewatering pumps. The doctor's house was built with attached clinic, kindergarten, school, post office, church and rectory, lodgings for the families of sharecroppers and labourers, thus giving birth to a new community. Today this is called Genagricola.
Other documents conserved in the Archive certify important personal relationships with the Company, such as the personal file of the writer Franz Kafka, with the job application and autographed curriculum vitae, or Umberto Nobile's documentation for the historic scientific expedition to the North Pole, and space insurance alongside the United States and China. But above all we find in the archive old policies, photo albums, precious specimens that recall participation in universal expositions or other celebrations.
The objects signed by artists of the period are interesting, such as the posters of Beltrame, Boccasile and Dudovich, and the fire plaques that can still be seen on houses and buildings today.
Among the largest insurance archives, declared a cultural asset by the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Historical Archive houses approx 65.000 units of documents for approximately 15 linear kilometres of documentation, 3.000 volumes of minutes dhe governing bodies, statutes, balance sheets and accounting books reproduced and consultable in digital format, 3.000 reproductions from loose photographs, photo albums and period printed material.
