There are anniversaries, and then there are anniversaries. Most companies mark a milestone with a press release and a commemorative coffee mug. Beretta, which has been making firearms since before Shakespeare was born, takes a different approach. For its 500th anniversary, the Gardone Val Trompia institution has released the SO10 EELL History. This is a one-off over-and-under shotgun that required over a thousand hours of hand engraving to complete. The coffee mug option was presumably considered and rejected.

This is the second one-off piece Beretta unveiled in 2026, and where the first leaned into modernity, the SO10 EELL History plants its feet firmly in the sixteenth century. The subject it commemorates is the Battle of Pavia, fought in February 1525 in Lombardy, a clash between the Kingdom of France and the Habsburg Empire that reshaped European power for generations. It also, not coincidentally, sits right at the origin point of Beretta's own story. The timing was not accidental.

The connection between Beretta and Pavia is more than symbolic. Franco Gussalli Beretta, the company's President and CEO, has been candid about the significance: the battle took place in 1525, just one year before the famous receipt signed by Bartolomeo Beretta that officially dates the company's founding to 1526. The Val Trompia valley, where Beretta still operates today, was already a well-established center for barrel manufacturing at the time. The probability that arquebus barrels produced by Bartolomeo Beretta's workshop contributed to the battle's outcome is, according to the company, quite high. History has a way of looping back on itself.

What makes Pavia particularly fitting as a commemorative subject is that the battle itself was a turning point in the story of firearms. It was one of the first major engagements in which massed gunfire decisively outperformed traditional cavalry and medieval bladed weapons. The French, relying on time-honored battlefield tactics, were beaten by Habsburg forces who had leaned into the new technology of the age. Firearms didn't just take part in the battle — they effectively determined its outcome, and in doing so, changed the calculus of European warfare permanently. Beretta is, in essence, marking its anniversary with a tribute to the moment its industry came of age.

Built on Beretta's flagship sidelock platform, this 20-gauge firearm features 30-inch barrels and a receiver meticulously machined from a solid block of high-resistance tri-alloy steel, completely eschewing casting or welding. The sophisticated sidelock system is engineered with hand-detachable side plates, allowing the internal action to be easily exposed for seamless maintenance and inspection.

Securing the mechanism is a robust locking system handled by a rear longitudinal bolt perfectly aligned with the hinge pins. This setup is further supported by two additional lower lugs that work in direct opposition with trapezoidal barrel shoulders. The entire assembly is built to an exacting level of modern tolerances that would have seemed like absolute wizardry back in 1525, perfectly bridging the gap between historical legacy and contemporary engineering.

The engraving is where the piece becomes something else entirely. Using hammer and chisel, burin work, and extensive gold and copper inlays, Beretta's artisans spent more than a thousand hours rendering the Battle of Pavia across the gun's metal surfaces. The city's architecture forms the backdrop, etched in deep-scroll framework that gives the scenes a theatrical depth.

On the left sideplate, Spanish soldiers with arquebuses engage the French cavalry shown on the right. The bottom of the receiver depicts the battle's aftermath, victors and vanquished together, framed by the golden Beretta 500 Years logo. Even the opening lever and trigger guard are fretworked as tributes to the anniversary. The attention to period-appropriate style was deliberate: Marco Martelli, Head of Design, described the goal as representing the event "in a highly faithful and traditional manner consistent with the 16th century period." The engravers were not asked to reimagine Pavia, they were asked to document it.

The stock is grade 5 walnut with a Tru-Oil finish, and the barrels are mirror-polished. These are the kinds of details that sound like footnotes until you're holding the thing, at which point they become the whole conversation. The wood grain of a well-selected walnut blank does work that no synthetic material can replicate, and a properly polished barrel in good light is not something you forget quickly. Both serve the visual coherence of the piece as this is a gun designed to be looked at as much as handled, and every surface contributes to that.

The case that houses the SO10 EELL History is its own undertaking. Built from solid wood and wrapped in vegetable-tanned leather with brass hardware, it opens to reveal dark Alcantara lining and gold-finished accessories. It was made by hand in Beretta's Gun Case Atelier. Whether or not one subscribes to the idea that a firearm's case should receive the same level of craft attention as the firearm itself, Beretta has answered the question for you, and the answer is yes, emphatically.

Five centuries is a long time to stay in any business, let alone one requiring this level of precision and craft. The SO10 EELL History doesn't try to explain how Beretta has done it as that would take considerably more than a thousand hours to engrave. What it does instead is compress five hundred years of continuity into a single object: a gun that commemorates the battle where firearms first proved their worth, built by the descendants of the man who may well have supplied some of those first firearms. It's the kind of full-circle story that would feel contrived if it weren't simply, stubbornly true.