Celebrating Scotland and Italy's links in lockdown
- Published
Scenes like this - from the Billiard Room Saloon and Cafe in Motherwell - are being shared during May
A celebration of the long-established links between Scotland and Italy is being held online.
Images from across the country and throughout the decades are being shared as part of the project.
Historic Environment Scotland (HES) said the scheme started out as school engagement work.
Traces of Italian Scots heritage in their archives inspired a combined creative learning project in early 2020 called Removed.
Stopani and Son's The Hosiery House advertises its services in Aberdeen
It made use of Scran, a project which provides educational access to digital materials, and a partnership involving HES, the University of St Andrews and Castlebrae Community High School
An exhibition of resulting artwork and archives should have opened at St Andrews University Library in April.
Shops across the country - like The Allies Cafe, Alloa from the 1920s - have been showcased via Twitter
However, the coronavirus outbreak intervened to put that plan - like so many others - on hold.
Instead, the project took to Twitter, external with Scran sharing the #ItalianScotsArchives as a "celebration of Scots Italian culture to alleviate lockdown".
Pacitti's shop selling Valente's ices in Edinburgh in 1907 was typical of many businesses
It is described as "looking at all things Italian in Scotland from family photos, to football, to fish and chips and so much more".
It is planned to run the project throughout the entire month of May.
Italian prisoners of war who built Orkney's Italian Chapel during World War Two also feature in the online "exhibition"
Among the images are a wide range of people, places and occasions.
One of them features footballer Rolando Ugolini who was born in Tuscany but moved to Scotland as a child.
Rolando Ugolini was born in Italy but played football for Celtic, Middlesbrough and Dundee United among others
He would go on to play for Celtic, Middlesbrough, Wrexham, Dundee United and Berwick Rangers - making more than 400 appearances across a career spanning nearly two decades.
Another item from the archives is a poster for the visit of the Italian circus to Lanark in 1929.
Documents, pictures and paperwork are all part of the archive
The images and documents are part of more than 400,000 records which are currently available to access free via Scran., external
It hosts material from more than 300 museums, galleries and archives from across the country.
Ice cream is a key part of the story as Luigi Coletta's cart in Dundee in 1907 illustrates
All images are copyrighted.