How Beretta became the world’s oldest gun manufacturer

Beretta is about to do something almost no company on earth can claim.

In 2026, this Italian gunmaker will quietly hit its 500th birthday.

Half a millennium of continuous operation, under the same family name, in the same little valley in northern Italy, and still making guns.

So how did Beretta become the world’s oldest gun manufacturer and manage to stay relevant from arquebuses to modern polymer pistols?

From Iron Valley To Arquebus Barrels

The story starts long before the first Beretta ever stamped his name on a barrel.

In northern Italy, there’s a river valley called Val Trompia that has been known for iron mining since the days of the Roman Empire.

By the time the Renaissance rolled around, Val Trompia wasn’t just digging up iron — it was shaping it into weapons.

By the mid-1500s, the valley boasted around forty ironworks, supplied by about fifty mines and multiple smelters. It was one of Europe’s early “arms industry” clusters before anyone called it that.

Right in the middle of this valley sat the village of Gardone.

That’s where the Beretta story really begins.

The first solid documentary appearance of the Beretta name is dated October 1526.

In that record, the Republic of Venice pays 296 ducats to a “Maestro di Canne” – Master of Barrels – named Bartolomeo Beretta.

The contract was for arquebus barrels, the long guns of that era.

Bartolomeo wasn’t just making weapons; he was already trusted enough for major government work in one of Europe’s most powerful states.

That one contract, written almost 500 years ago, is basically Beretta’s birth certificate.

Passing The Torch, One Barrel At A Time

What makes Beretta unusual isn’t just how early it appears in the record.

It’s that the knowledge and ownership stayed in the same family, generation after generation.

The skill of barrel-making passed from Bartolomeo to his son, then to his grandson, then to the next branch of the family tree, over and over again.

Instead of selling out or splintering, the Berettas built a true dynasty.

By 1698, Beretta had become the second-largest barrel producer in Gardone.

By the 17th century, it was the largest barrel maker in the entire area.

That may sound like a small regional detail, but in a valley built around weapons manufacturing, being the leading barrel shop meant being at the center of European firepower.

For armies and city-states that were constantly fighting or preparing to fight, reliable barrels were life-or-death equipment.

Honestly, that focus on barrels is telling.

If you can consistently make strong, accurate, safe barrels, everything else about a gun becomes easier to build around them. Beretta built its reputation, and its survival, on that core competence.

From Craft Shop To Industrial Powerhouse

Skip ahead to the 1800s and the company looks very different.

The world is industrializing, railroads are appearing, and Beretta is no longer a tiny shop in a village.

One of the key figures of this period is Pietro Antonio Beretta.

He traveled across Italy demonstrating his company’s products and collecting orders, even as wars and political chaos made travel difficult.

His son, Giuseppe, pushed even further, turning Beretta into a player on the international market.

By the 1880s, the company was reportedly producing around 8,000 guns a year – serious volume for that era.

Beretta wasn’t just making old-fashioned muskets either.

It was responsible for one of the very first submachine guns in the world, the Beretta Model 1918, introduced just after World War I.

Around that same period, the company’s workforce reached roughly 1,000 employees.

For a business that started as one man making barrels by hand, that’s an enormous leap.

This is where you see a pattern that explains why Beretta outlived so many competitors: it always adapted to what soldiers and governments actually needed.

From smoothbore barrels to early SMGs, it never got stuck in one era.

Surviving Fascism, Nazis, And World War II

The 20th century could easily have killed the company.

Instead, it became the stage where Beretta proved just how resilient it really was.

Another pivotal family figure, often referred to as the second Pietro Beretta, led the company into the modern age.

He invested in serious infrastructure, including building a hydroelectric plant to power the factory. That gave Beretta more control over production and less dependence on outside utilities.

In 1920, the firm bought other Italian arms operations, expanding its footprint and capabilities.

Even as fascism spread across Italy in the 1930s, Val Trompia didn’t fully turn into a harsh ideological company town.

Beretta maintained a more “family-like” relationship with its employees, which helped soften the edges of the political climate inside the plant.

Then came World War II – and things got dangerous fast.

German forces eventually occupied Beretta’s facilities.

The Nazis even took Pietro Beretta hostage for a time.

He was ultimately rescued by Italian partisans, and the company survived the war battered but intact.

After the fighting stopped, Beretta went back to doing what it did best: making weapons for the Italian army, police forces, and civilian shooters.

The fact that the business made it through fascism, foreign occupation, and global war without collapsing or being permanently nationalized is remarkable.

A lot of gunmakers disappeared in the 20th century. Beretta kept moving.

The M9 Era And The American Breakthrough

For centuries, Beretta was mostly a European name.

That changed in a big way in the late 20th century.

In 1977, the company founded Beretta USA, buying a bankrupt gun factory near Washington, D.C.

It wasn’t a random move – Beretta already had a star product ready to ride the wave: the Beretta 92, a 9mm semi-automatic pistol introduced in the mid-1970s.

The 92 was modern, high-capacity, and reliable.

When the U.S. military went looking for a new sidearm to replace the 1911, Beretta seized the opportunity.

In the 1980s, the U.S. Army selected the Beretta 92 as its new standard pistol.

In military service it was designated the M9.

That contract was huge.

It not only put Beretta handguns in the holsters of U.S. service members, it also gave the brand massive visibility in North America.

The M9 stayed in U.S. service for decades, until it was eventually replaced by the SIG Sauer P320 in 2019.

In the meantime, the commercial and law enforcement versions of the Beretta 92 – especially the 92FS – became iconic.

Police departments appreciated its 15-round magazine at a time when many big-bore pistols still only held around eight rounds.

Civilians picked them up too, often paying around $600 for a 92 while smaller .22s went for roughly $200.

Hollywood noticed. Beretta pistols showed up in action movies like Lethal Weapon, cementing their place in pop-culture gun history.

If you grew up in the 1980s or 1990s, that open-slide Beretta silhouette is probably burned into your brain.

The U.S. contract didn’t just sell guns – it gave Beretta a global, almost cinematic identity.

Building A Modern Global Gun Group

By the year 2000, Beretta was no longer just a family shop or even a single factory brand.

It had become a group.

The main facility in Gardone had grown to around 75,000 square feet.

Additional sites in Italy, Spain, and Maryland added roughly another 50,000 square feet of production space.

In the early 2000s, Beretta moved aggressively into acquisitions.

It bought the remaining shares of Benelli, another respected Italian gunmaker known for its shotguns.

It then snapped up a major stake,  about 86 percent, in Aldo Uberti & Co., a company focused on high-quality replica firearms, especially classic Western and historical designs.

That business was pulling in around $15 million a year.

With a holding structure in place to coordinate these operations, the group also acquired Sako, a Finnish maker of hunting and sporting rifles, in 2001.

This combination of brands meant Beretta could cover everything from tactical pistols to bolt-action hunting rifles to historical replicas under one corporate umbrella.

Today, the company is officially known as Fabbrica d’Armi Pietro Beretta.

It is run by Franco Gussalli Beretta, who serves as president and CEO, keeping the family line intact yet again.

The product lineup now spans semi-automatic pistols, a handful of revolvers, competition and field shotguns, rifles, carbines, submachine guns, machine pistols, and even grenade launchers.

In other words, if it launches a projectile, Beretta has probably made some version of it.

The Secret To 500 Years

So what’s the real secret behind Beretta’s survival and success?

It isn’t just luck.

First, location mattered.

Being born in Val Trompia, a place soaked in iron and gunmaking tradition, gave the company a deep technical base.

Second, the family never let go.

Instead of cashing out or losing control through feuds and splits, generation after generation took responsibility for growing and modernizing the business.

Third, Beretta managed a rare balance between tradition and adaptation.

From arquebus barrels to early submachine guns, from Italian police pistols to the U.S. Army’s M9, the company kept reading the moment and adjusting its products.

And finally, it treated its workforce and community like something more than expendable parts.

That approach helped it survive turbulent political eras and rebuild after war.

As Beretta approaches its 500th year in 2026, it’s not just the world’s oldest active gun manufacturer.

It’s a living example of how a company can evolve across centuries without losing its identity.

In an industry where brands come and go with every political cycle and market trend, that kind of staying power is almost unbelievable – but very real, stamped right into steel in a little Italian valley that’s been shaping guns longer than most countries have existed.