Photographs from the Ottoman Empire

The third volume of the series of Photographic Albums of the Intesa Sanpaolo Historical Archives is devoted to a striking and previously unpublished collection of photographs linked to the history of the Banca Commerciale Italiana (COMIT), a credit institution that set up the SocietÓ Commerciale dÆOriente (COMOR) in Geneva in 1907, together with a group of Venetian entrepreneurs led by Giuseppe Volpi. Their aim was to promote the financing of plants and infrastructure such as railways, mines, electric power stations and shipping companies in the Near East.

COMOR moved its headquarters to Milan in 1912 but it had various offices it could count on in the Mediterranean basin, including an office in Istanbul, then Constantinople, managed by engineer Bernardino Nogara, a fiduciary of COMIT in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, and a prominent figure in the history of the 20th century.

The photographic narrative begins in the Ottoman Empire of the early 20th century, and ends with the outbreak o