Ancient Web: Italy's National UFO Center Preserved Its 1997 Web Archive

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Italy's Centro Ufologico Nazionale has done something surprisingly useful for Internet archaeology: while moving forward, it kept a large chunk of its old Web presence visible behind it.

Visit the Centro Ufologico Nazionale archive site

The organization traces its Internet presence to 1997, when webmaster Vladimiro Bibolotti launched the site under CUN-IT.ORG. The project later used CUN-ITALIA.NET and eventually CentroUfologicoNazionale.net. The current page says the official organization is moving to a newer domain while this older site becomes Bibolotti's personal archive and "diario di bordo."

That makes the site interesting whether or not you believe a single extraordinary claim found in UFO literature.

The Web history is real.

Twenty-nine years of one fringe subject, organized in public

The preserved original-style pages contain sighting statistics, press releases, conference information, newsletters, research documents, archived news and material about the history of Italian ufology. An older homepage still advertises FAQ sections, foreign correspondents, event listings, archives and even an old search engine.

Its visual language is unmistakably from another period: small GIFs, image-heavy navigation, national and European flags, anniversary graphics and long stacks of categorized links.

The archive is also useful as a record of how UFO organizations presented themselves before social media and streaming video became central. The pages mix organizational history, reports, media references, conference promotion, document libraries and attempts to systematize sighting data.

Again, preserving the site does not require endorsing its conclusions. Historical research benefits from primary material precisely because it shows what a community said, collected and believed at a given time.

The site's own chronology is unusually explicit. It records the 1997 launch, later domain changes, and the preservation of material created across decades. In 2026 it is effectively documenting its own transition from active organizational website into archive.

Some old sites vanish when the organization redesigns.

This one left the weird filing cabinets unlocked.

Explore the surviving CUN Italia Network pages

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.