The “Orientale” has its beginnings in the Chinese College founded by Matteo Ripa. He was a lay priest and missionary who worked as a painter and engraver at the court of the Manchu Qing Emperor Kanxi. When he came back to Naples, he brought with him four young Chinese people along with one of their compatriots who was an expert in spoken and written Mandarin. They formed the original nucleus of the College.  
It was Clemente XII who granted the Chinese College official recognition on  7 April 1732. The aim of the institution was to train young Chinese people as priests, so they could spread the Catholic religion back in their own country.  
One of the original aims of the College was also to train people as interpreters of Indian and Chinese languages to work for the Ostend Company. This was set up by the Netherlands with the support of Carlo VI of Hapsburg to further trade relations between the Far East and the Hapsburg Empire which the Kingdom of Naples was a part of. During Matteo Ripa’s time, a boarding school had already been set up within the college where young Neapolitans could pay to be educated. During the 1700s, its students included Saint Alfonso, Maria de’ Liguori and the venerable Gennaro Sarnelli.
From 1747 onwards, young people from the Ottoman Empire (Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Lebanon, Egypt) were also accepted at the College. They were trained and ordained as priests so they could do missionary work back in their own countries. 
From 1736 until 1888, a group of lay priests - the Congregation of the Sacred Family of Jesus Christ  - were in charge of educating both the College students and boarders. After the unification of Italy in 1868, the Chinese College became the Royal Asiatic College and was divided into two sections. The first one was responsible for missionary work, and the second offered language training to young people interested in learning Eastern Asiatic languages. Before the reforms instituted in 1878 by the then Minister for Education, Francesco De Sanctis, the teaching of Arabic and Russian had already been introduced.  
After the De Sanctis reforms, Hindi and Urdu as well as Persian and Modern Greek were also introduced. In December 1888, a State decree transformed the Royal Asiatic College into the Oriental Institute or “Orientale”.  
This reform led to the closure of the missionary section and the Institute was awarded University status whereas the Royal Asiatic College had been an Upper Secondary School. The “Orientale” today is the oldest school of Sinology and Oriental studies in the whole of Europe. Spoken and written Mandarin Chinese have been taught there since 1724, and Hindi and Urdu since 1878. 
 The “Orientale” currently specialises in Oriental and African languages and literature, history and art-history, but also offers courses in cultural studies relating to Mediterranean countries, Europe and the Americas.

(Historical information by  prof. Michele Fatica) http://www.unior.it