Biblioteca Civica Attilio Hortis

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Biblioteca Civica Attilio Hortis is the city library of Trieste . As the oldest public institution in the city, the library has around 400,000 works, including 383 incunabula . The library's holdings include a collection of works by Francesco Petrarca and Pope Pius II, as well as the first statutes of the city of Trieste from 1318.

Seat of the city library

location

The library is located in Palazzo Biserini on Piazza Attilio Hortis , the center of the Borgo Giuseppino district . In addition to the library, the building also houses the natural history museum Museo di Storia Naturale .

Surname

Originally founded as Publica Biblioteca Arcadica Tergestina , the city library was renamed in 1950 in honor of the former library director and politician Attilio Hortis .

history

Based on the Academy of the Arcadia in Rome founded Giuseppe de Coletti 1780 in Gorizia the literary circle Academy of the Arcadia Romano-Sonziaci which was moved shortly thereafter to Trieste. In 1793, on the initiative of Coletti, the circle founded the city's first public library, which was called Publica Biblioteca Arcadica Tergestina and which Coletti himself took over. The facility was initially housed in the then town hall Palazzo Pubblico on the Piazza Grande . In 1796 members of the Accademia donated approximately 4,000 books to the library.

After the Napoleonic occupation of Trieste, the city library was moved to a building on the Contrada del Corso (today Corso Italia ) in 1813 . Between 1820 and 1823, Coletti's successor in the library management, Giuseppe de Lugnani, initiated the relocation of the furnishings to Palazzo Biserini , a building on Piazza Lipsia (today Piazza Attilio Hortis ), which the Ticino architect Pietro Nobile had built for the Academy of Commerce and Shipping ( Accademia di Commercio e Nautica ) in the late classicist style . At the time of the move, the library holdings comprised over 100,000 works.

Bust of Attilio Hortis in the square in front of the library

In 1842 the library was expanded to include the collection of Domenico Rossetti , which included exhibits by Francesco Petrarca and Enea Silvio de Piccolomini, a bishop of Trieste and later Pope Pius II . Since 1852 exists legal deposit , d. This means that from this point in time, a copy of every new printed work published in the vicinity of Trieste must be delivered to the city library. This ordinance was the origin of the Raccolta Patria department , in which the local history of Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Istria has been collated and documented over the years . Among the works are the first statutes of the city from 1318. Purchases and donations such as the collection of Salomon de Parente with 400 prints by Giambattista Bodoni and the collection of the Greek Dionisiso Therianòs expanded the library holdings.

In 1873 the 22-year-old Attilio Hortis was appointed library manager. Due to his political and cultural commitment as a librarian, promoter of Italian identity and literature in Trieste and representative of the interests of the city in Rome, the library was renamed in 1950 in honor of Hortis.

In the 1920s, the city library was expanded to include the buildings of the Accademia di Commercio e Nautica (now Istituto Tecnico Commerciale and Istituto Tecnico Nautico ) and the Museo di Antichità (now the Civico Museo di Storia ed Arte ).

Under the direction of Sauro Pesante, the library, which was previously reserved primarily for scholars and researchers, was opened to the general public between 1960 and 1978. Pesante introduced the Dewey Decimal Classification system for indexing the library holdings .

Duration

Today the library contains over 400,000 works, which are housed in different departments. The most important departments are listed below.

Incunabula and writings from the Cinquecento

The department includes 383 incunabula and 2,528 prints from the 16th century. The most important incunabula include:

The works of Aldus Manutius are among the most important prints from the 16th century .

Museo Petrarchesco Piccolomineo

In December 2003 the Museo Petrarchesco Piccolomineo was opened as part of the library, which exhibits around 5,500 works by and about Francesco Petrarca and Enea Silvio de Piccolomini from the collection of Domenico Rossetti as well as from later donations and purchases.

Raccolta Patria

In the Raccolta Patria department , the history of Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Istria is documented in over 40,000 books, magazines, manuscripts, engravings and photographs. The collection includes a print of the statutes of the city of Trieste from 1625 as well as numerous historical works by Domenico Rossetti (1774–1842) and Pietro Kandler (1804–1872).

City Archives

The city ​​archive contains over 2,500 documents from the Middle Ages, including the first statutes of the city of Trieste from 1318. In addition, the archive houses over 5,800 documents and files that were collected in the town hall between 1776 and 1918 under the Habsburg rule and after Second World War were integrated in the city library. Together with the Raccolta Patria department , the archive provides well-founded evidence of the various stages of development of Trieste over the past centuries.

management

The following people were the head of the library:

  • Giuseppe de Coletti (1793-1815)
  • Giuseppe de Lugnani (1815-1857)
  • Francesco de Fiori (1857-1870)
  • Carlo Buttazzoni (1870–1872)
  • Jacopo Cavalli (1872–1873)
  • Attilio Hortis (1873-1922)
  • Giacomo Braun (1922-1942)
  • Mario Moro (1942–1943)
  • Pier Antonio Quarantotti Gambini (1943–1945)
  • Aldo Tassini (1945-1959)
  • Sauro Pesante (1959–1978)
  • Anna Rosa Rugliano (1978-2001)
  • Bianca Cuderi (since 2003)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fiorentina De Vecchi, Lorenza Resciniti, Marzia Vidulli Torlo (2005): Triest - A travel guide to art history (Bruno Fachin Editore), Triest, p. 37.
  2. ^ Klaus Zimmermann, Andrea C. Theil, Christoph Ulmer (2006): Friuli and Triest. Under St. Mark's Lion and Double Eagle. A cultural landscape of Upper Italy , 3rd, updated edition (DuMont Reise Verlag), Ostfildern, p. 321.

Web links

Coordinates: 45 ° 38 ′ 48.9 ″  N , 13 ° 46 ′ 4 ″  E