We present the preliminary study of a historical collection of 1·5 million Formalin Fixed Paraffin Embedded (FFPE) organ samples. This biobank was constituted between the early twentieth century and the early twenty-first century and is maintained by the Institute of Pathological Anatomy of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Strasbourg. We endeavoured to detect the bacterium responsible for syphilis, Treponema pallidum pallidum, because its detection is particularly difficult, even in living patients, and because it was not only prevalent in the early twentieth century but is also a reemerging infection in all regions of the world.We selected 28 cases of syphilis from 1947 to 1970 and proceeded with the parallel extraction of DNA and the histological analysis of FFPE samples. We designed a PCR detection approach and performed a complete reformatting and histological analysis of the paraffin blocks. The two samples with the highest DNA yield were then subjected to targeted enrichment using a custom panel and sequenced on Illumina MiSeq.T. p. pallidum was detected in 14 out of the 28 FFPE samples we analysed, using either PCR or Warthin-Starry silver staining and we obtained a complete genomic sequence (99·66% at an average coverage depth of 14x) for one sample from 1947. This work therefore demonstrates the usability of 75-year-old FFPE samples for genomic studies (the oldest Treponema genome obtained directly from a clinical sample) and the applicability of complex staining to the same type of material. Incidentally, we also show that the strain present in Strasbourg in 1947 reinforces the validity of a marginal cluster of Treponema genomes previously only found in the Americas from 1953 onwards and questions the phylogenetic division of the subspecies of the bacterium.