  This paper introduces Fetch-A-Set (FAS), a comprehensive benchmark tailored
for legislative historical document analysis systems, addressing the challenges
of large-scale document retrieval in historical contexts. The benchmark
comprises a vast repository of documents dating back to the XVII century,
serving both as a training resource and an evaluation benchmark for retrieval
systems. It fills a critical gap in the literature by focusing on complex
extractive tasks within the domain of cultural heritage. The proposed benchmark
tackles the multifaceted problem of historical document analysis, including
text-to-image retrieval for queries and image-to-text topic extraction from
document fragments, all while accommodating varying levels of document
legibility. This benchmark aims to spur advancements in the field by providing
baselines and data for the development and evaluation of robust historical
document retrieval systems, particularly in scenarios characterized by wide
historical spectrum.
