Accepting the invitation of the Italian Philatelic Press Union and the Institute of Postal Historical Studies “Aldo Cecchi” of Prato, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta took part in the third edition of the “Tavolo dei «Postali»”, which took place in Palermo from 6 to 8 October 2023.

Promoted not only by USFI and the ISSP of Prato, but also by the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy and by the online daily paper “Vaccari News”, the “Tavolo dei «Postali»”, now at its third edition, is a moment in which bodies, institutions and single specialists meet with the aim of reading the postal world according to four unusual approaches: art, preservation, culture and entertainment.

Twenty speakers proposed interventions of various kinds with one common thread, the post, ranging from epistolary letters to futurist influences, from the Quirinale post office to the disinfection of letters in times of epidemics, from the European Post Office in Egypt to philatelic rarities in Sicily.

Representing the Order of Malta were the Head of Operations of the Magistral Archives and Library Valeria Maria Leonardi and the Post and Philately Director Nicola Burdiat, who gave a talk entitled “The Order of Malta’s epistolary archives and the organisation of its modern Post Office”.

The talk, much appreciated by those present in the hall, reviewed the correspondence from Malta and many cities in Italy and Europe up to 1798, bearing witness to the Order’s dense diplomatic activity, kept in the Magistral Archives in Rome, also dwelling on the methods used to send it, up to the present day, with the establishment in 1966 of the modern Poste Magistrali administration, the designated postal operator of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, as provided for in the agreement signed in 2014 with the Government of the Italian Republic.