Fabbrica d'Armi Pietro Beretta is a major Italian firearm manufacturing company. Its firearms are used world-wide by civilians, police, and armies. Beretta is one of the world's oldest corporations, it has been owned by the same family for some five hundred years. The Beretta company was established in 1526, when gunsmith Mastro Bartolomeo Beretta, of Gardone Val Trompia (Brescia, Lombardy, Italy), was paid 296 ducats in payment for 185 arquebus barrels by the Arsenal of Venice. The bills of sale for that firearms order are in the firm's archives.