Catalogue description British Council: Registered Files, Italy

In 1917, a British Institute was opened in Florence by local British residents, to provide English teaching facilities as well as a forum for Anglo-Italian intellectual exchanges. The institute received a royal charter in 1923, but was nonetheless always short of funds. The British Council began giving the Institute grants in support of its work soon after the council was founded in 1934, and these enabled the Institute to open secondary branches in Milan and Rome in 1938. The British Council had a resident representative in Italy from 1939, when it took over the running of the two secondary institutes, and opened its own new ones in Genoa, Naples and Palermo.

The duties of an overseas representative include the promotion of a wider knowledge and understanding of Great Britain in other countries through cultural and educational co-operation, and this rôle was seen as being of great importance in Italy in the months before the outbreak of the Second World War, and again in the cold war period following 1945.

Italy entered the Second World War in 1940, at which time the British Council representation there withdrew and its institutes closed. At the end of the War the council returned to Italy, however, and has had permanent representation there ever since. The council has been particularly involved in organising British representation at the bi-annual fine arts exhibition in Venice (the Venice Biennale) since it restarted in 1948.