Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient
The Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente (IsIAO) was a Rome-based institute created in 1995 by merging IsMEO (the Italian Institute for the Middle and the Far East) with the Istituto Italo-Africano. It closed in 2012. Its museum collection is now overseen by the Polo Museale del Lazio.
IsIAO aimed to promote Italy’s cultural relations with African and Asian countries. Its goals were to support study and research, encourage cultural and scientific collaboration among researchers, carry out cooperation and guidance projects to conserve and promote the heritage of Asian countries, conduct archaeological missions, publish works, and sign agreements with universities and cultural and research institutions in Italy and abroad. The institute was led from the start by Gherardo Gnoli.
The IsIAO library had two sections, African and Oriental. It held about 2,500 periodicals (roughly 500 are still published) and many manuscripts, maps, photographs and other items. The African photo collection came from the Ministry of Italian Africa and included about 500,000 prints and 20,000 negatives. The Oriental photo collection had about 500,000 pictures from missions, including around 12,000 from Giuseppe Tucci’s Himalayan expeditions, with unique Tibetan monuments photos that no longer exist. The Map Library held about 3,000 maps (14,000 sheets) from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the largest collection of its kind in Italy, with heavy representation of Eritrea, Somalia, Libya and Ethiopia.
The Oriental collections were owned by IsIAO but kept at the Giuseppe Tucci National Museum of Oriental Art in Rome. They included finds from archaeological excavations and a major Gandhara art collection. The African collections, kept by IsIAO, included Ethiopian paintings, wooden sculptures, crafts, archaeological finds and documents related to Italian explorers and artists in the former colonies.
IsIAO offered courses with roots going back to 1934, when IsMEO already taught Chinese and Japanese in Rome. In 1951, Practical three-year courses of Oriental languages and cultures were formalized. Languages taught included Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, Indonesian and more.
From the 1950s, IsIAO published more than 500 titles, such as monographs, critical editions of manuscripts, excavation reports, conference papers and reviews. Its publisher catalogue was available online from September 2008.
IsIAO built an international network of agreements and fellowships with European and Asian institutions, working with researchers from many countries. Its activities covered places including Afghanistan, the People’s Republic of China, Georgia, Japan, Jordan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Mali, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:03 (CET).