Biblioteca Centrale della Regione Siciliana

Biblioteca Centrale della Regione Siciliana
	; Biblioteca Centrale della Regione Siciliana
founding	1782
Duration	0.6 million volumes (2009)
Library type	Regional library
place	Palermo
ISIL	IT-PA0064

The Biblioteca Centrale della Regione Siciliana “Alberto Bombace” ( Biblioteca Nazionale di Palermo until 1977 ) is the central regional library of the Autonomous Region of Sicily . It is located on Corso Vittorio Emanuele in Palermo , about 150 meters east of the cathedral .

history

The history of the library goes back to a Jesuit college founded in 1549 , for which a new building complex was built near the cathedral from 1586 (Collegio Massimo) . After the abolition of the Jesuit order in 1773, the extensive book collections of the Jesuits served as the basis for the 1782 by King Ferdinand III. "Royal Library" founded by Sicily and the Prince of Torremuzza. In the course of the unification of Italy , it was declared a national library at the end of 1860 . In 1977 it was taken over by the Sicily Region and renamed "Central Library of the Sicily Region". In 2003 it was named after the Sicilian cultural official Alberto Bombace (1934–2003).

The Biblioteca Centrale della Regione Siciliana is the second oldest library in Palermo after the Biblioteca Comunale di Palermo, founded in 1760 .

Duration

In 2009, the inventory amounted to around 600,000 volumes, almost 1,100 incunabula , 15,000 manuscripts, 5,600 prints from the 16th century and 5,000 periodicals (1,100 current ones). In addition, there are newspapers, drawings, maps, autographs, codices, photographs, slides, microfilms, microfiches and other media units. The manuscripts mostly come from the libraries of monasteries such as San Martino delle Scale , which were closed in 1866 , including a copy of Leonardo Bruni's translation of the Aristotelian Nicomachean Ethics or an anthology with writings by Bernhard von Clairvaux and Johannes Gallensis . A humanistic manuscript of the Consolatio philosophiae of Boethius and a codex from the second half of the 14th century with the Communiloquium and other writings by Johannes Gallensis also come from San Martino , while the provenance of a richly illuminated manuscript of the Communiloquium and the Breviloquium of Johannes Gallensis, which at the end also contains a pseudo-Aristotelian text is unclear. A humanistic codex with translated writings by Lucian of Samosata and a collection of letters erroneously attributed to the Phalaris of Agrigento was taken from the library of the Collegio Massimo . The mostly modern “philosophical” manuscripts are currently best indexed online. Under the collective title I tesori della biblioteca , examples of images with short multilingual descriptions of documents, manuscripts and printed works are shown. The 38 Greek and 38 Oriental manuscripts come mainly from the Collegio Massimo.

The library keeps the archives of documents (tabulario) of the monastery and archdiocese of Monreale .

In 1999, the library acquired the editorial archive of the Palermitan daily L'Ora , known for its investigative journalism , which contains material from the end of the 1950s until 1992, when it was discontinued. Some of them have already been cataloged, especially the Cronaca nera , reports of criminal cases mostly related to the Mafia .