X - XX centuries

The noble family of Anguissola from Piacenza generated numerous branches, as attested in the province of Pavia and in Naples. The branch of the family linked to the Visconti di Modrone is the Anguissola di Vigolzone. In 1599, Alessandro, Count of Vigolzone, was invested with the marquisate of Grazzano. In 1870, with the death of the Marquis Ranuzio Filippo, the firstborn line became extinct and the estate passed to the Marquis's mother, Francesca, called Fanny, Visconti di Modrone, widow of Gaetano Anguissola, who sold off a portion of it. When Fanny died, the entire archive of the Anguissola family came to the Visconti di Modrone, along with the surviving properties of Folignano, Rottofreno, Caselle Landi and Grazzano.  Subsequent vicissitudes of the Visconti family led to the assignment of possessions in the Piacenza area to the third son, Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone.  Giuseppe was the driving force behind the rebirth of Grazzano, which was rebuilt in the Neo-medieval style by the architect Alfredo Campanini.

The Fondo Anguissola was collected with that of the Visconti di Modrone, reorganized and catalogued according to the administrative needs and purposes of the employees. In spite of the merger, the Anguissola papers maintained their own archival identity, thanks in part to their remarkable documentary consistency. This enabled a recent reordering of the documentation aimed at reconstructing the original series, although serious problems of dispersion and destruction due to the displacements of war had to be taken into account.  The fond preserves, among other things, some of the oldest documents of the entire complex of the Visconti di Modrone archive.

The Fondo Anguissola, now almost completely reordered, currently has 272 folders. It has been grouped into four family series, resulting from the confluence of other patrician families into that of the Anguissola:

• Anguissola di Grazzano
• Anguissola di San Polo
• Fontana
• Scotti di Agazzano

For each family group, the files are organized in the following sub-series, which follow the 19th-century archival work which called for classification by subject.

• Araldica
• Matrimoni
• Eredità
• Amministrazione centrale
• Fondi e case
• Culto

The collection is accompanied by an inventory.