Pursuant to the first Code of Internal Regulations, effective December 1880, the Secretariat General, one of the seven divisions, was in charge of the preservation of the “General Archives” of the National Bank of Romania. Documents dating back to 1885 speak of the position of general archivist held by Napoleon Carabulea. He was paid one of the highest wages in the issuing house, i.e. lei 450 per month, at a time when the secretary general’s wage was no higher than lei 850 lei and the prices of meat and fish were lei 0.80/kilogramme and lei 0.90/kilogramme respectively.

Instructions prepared for the bank’s branches and agencies in 1911 were signed by Anton Carp, the then Governor, and I. G. Bibicescu, the secretary-general, and encompassed guidelines on arranging the letters and other documents generated by the institution. Thus, the records were filed by the following categories: confidential correspondence, special correspondence, reports, etc.; “information notes” concerning discount window borrower; headquarters’ circulars on personnel; the exchange of letters between the headquarters and its territorial units as well as inter-units correspondence; cash positions and cash statements related to discounted coupons, etc.; supportive documents of discount window borrowers; and any other document. Apart from the guidelines on filing, directions were also given on sheet numbering, certification and inscription of files, archiving the files by year and their recording in a directory file. The oldest archival materials of the National Bank of Romania contain information on the records generated in the period 1891-1893.

During World War One, when the National Bank of Romania’s headquarters was relocated to Iaşi (November 1916 - 1 December 1918), part of the bank’s head office archive was sent to Moldavia and further on to Moscow, being included in the second shipment of the bank’s Treasure in July 1917. The remaining archival materials were kept in Bucharest and escaped unscathed by the German occupation troops. This also holds true for the then current archive of the National Bank of Romania’s branches and agencies. Older records were stored, in line with the guidelines, in the vault of each unit and the keys were entrusted to the security officer, whereas the files required by the bank’s day‑to‑day activity were sent to Iaşi. On 16 June 1935, part of the archival materials that had been kept in Moscow was sent back to Bucharest.

In the interwar years, the Secretariat General also included the Archives Section headed by Ilie M. Ionescu. One of the pressing issues back then was the scant storage space. In 1938, the National Bank of Romania was still preserving a large part of the archive running from 1880. The archive was stored in the attic and in one of the rooms in the bank’s main building, as well as in the basement of the Modern Theatre (formerly located where the New Palace of the National Bank of Romania now stands). In 1939, when the Modern Theatre was razed to the ground, the archive was relocated to a building in Alexandru Lahovary Street. At the same time, the general archives were subjected to a massive selection. In order to ensure the files being shipped from the headquarters to the storage facility, the institution bought a “tricycle to which a closed box was attached”. This however could not secure the timely shipment of documents and hence, in March 1940, the bank’s archive was relocated to the building at 2 Doamnei Street, the former location of “Marmorosch Blank” Bank. In charge of the selection and successive relocations of the archive was Gh. C. Marinescu, the head of Secretariat. In fact, he was the promoter of the idea that the archive, together with the offices of the archivist and his/her assistants, should be housed in a specially-designed area.

Given the lessons learned in the aftermath of World War One, during World War Two the National Bank of Romania’s executives took steps to ensure the protection of valuables, including that of archival materials. In February 1943, the highly important documents that were not required by the current activity were sent to Govora. The remaining documents were left at different locations in Bucharest so as to be protected from air bombings. Seldom used files were housed in the basement of the New Palace of the National Bank of Romania and those required by the bank’s day-to-day activity were transferred to the basement of the “Marmorosch Blank” building.

At the outset of 1944, when the battlefield was painfully nearing Romania’s borders, the records of the National Bank of Romania head office were relocated to Băile Herculane and Păuşeşti-Măglaşi, Vâlcea County, at the manor of Mihail Oromolu, former governor of the National Bank of Romania.

Once life resumed its normal course after the war, the National Bank of Romania Archive was brought back to Bucharest before the end of 1945. The records were stored in the basement of the New Palace of the National Bank of Romania where they are to be found today. Concurrently, steps were taken to reorganise the archive as a unit within the Secretariat General of the National Bank of Romania.

Since 2000, the areas housing the central bank’s fonds have been subject to extensive restoration and revamping, thereby ensuring adequate conditions for the preservation of the valuable records of the National Bank of Romania.

Over time, the specific legal provisions allowed the institution’s archive to develop particularly good relations with the State Archives, subsequently the National Archives. At present, the National Bank of Romania Archive functions in compliance with the provisions of Law No. 312/2004 on the Statute of the National Bank of Romania and Law No. 16/1996 (Romanian only) on the National Archives, as subsequently amended and supplemented.