Istituto Centrale per gli Archivi, National archives institute in Rome, Italy.

The Istituto Centrale per gli Archivi is a national institution in Rome that collects and protects documents and records from across Italy. It operates a large network of archives throughout the country to organize and make historical materials available.

The Istituto centrale per gli archivi was created by legislative decree 20 of 1998, no. 368, which set up a central office for archives at the ministry to define standards for inventories and new technologies. Its actual establishment came in 2006, when rooms were found inside the National Central Library of Rome. The offices moved to via Sommacampagna in March 2010 and returned to the library from 2013. A 2019 decree made it an autonomous central institute.

In 2017 ICAR signed a three-year framework agreement with Wikimedia Italia. As a result, some Wikipedia biographies, such as that of Giovanni Ansaldo, were corrected using textual pages held in the ICAR archive, and readers were directed to the archival funds of the figures described.

Visitors can use the institute's online portal to access digitized documents and catalogues without needing to be on site. It is helpful to check the website beforehand to see which collections relate to your research interests.

The institute continuously converts old paper records into digital formats to preserve them for future generations. These digitization projects use technology to give valuable documents a second life and make them accessible worldwide.