Twelve years ago, after long, complex restoration works, the reopening to the public of the library at Palazzo Mauri.

Today we are celebrating an anniversary: exactly 12 years ago, on 9 April 2009, the Giosuè Carducci City Library reopened to the public in its historic location in Palazzo Mauri. Spoleto’s most important book heritage had been housed in the seventeenth-century building since October 1933.

The link between the library, Palazzo Mauri and the city was broken for twenty-seven years, from 1982 to 2009, mainly due to the 1979 earthquake that damaged the building.

Apart from a short period of time in 1984, when the library only provided essential services, the complex restoration work on the Palazzo Mauri forced the city administration to think about a temporary location, which was found in Viale Trento e Trieste, where the library moved from 20 May 1989.

This was until 2009, when the city, with the library back in Palazzo Mauri, regained possession of a book heritage of more than 100,000 volumes housed in a historical-architectural setting (on three floors of about 2,200 square metres) of great value which, in addition to being a point of reference for memory and knowledge, also became one of the most significant places of cultural production and use in the area. The restoration and redevelopment of the building was carried out using regional earthquake funds, CIPE funds, European funding, Law 400 of 2000, and co-financing from the City totalling 10.5 million euro.

The history of the library shares ancient origins with the city. Perhaps the oldest of Spoleto’s libraries, according to the documents that have come down to us, it belonged to the Cathedral Chapter around the year 1000. If we consider it as a civic institution, however, it was born in 1861, when the collection of the Jesuit college – which was then the most important public collection of books in Spoleto – was made available to the city. The collection counted 5892 volumes, as stated in a 1934 article by the art critic and archivist Luigi Fausti. Housed for a very short time in the Jesuit college, the collection was transferred to the premises of the Chiesa della Trinità (in Piazza XX Settembre) and named after Giosuè Carducci in 1907, immediately after the poet’s death. A year after its foundation, the library was entrusted to Rinaldo Gherghi, a fundamental figure in the development of the cultural institution, which in thirty years was able to almost triple the number of volumes, thanks to the heritage transferred to the City from the suppressed religious houses. In the 1930s, the library had a patrimony of approximately 40,000 volumes.

It was Luigi Fausti who, in 1918, urged and convinced the City administration to purchase palazzo Mauri (17th-century home of one of Spoleto’s noble families), to house the library, thus finding a more suitable and prestigious location than the old premises of the Trinity church.

Many years had to pass before the move to Palazzo Mauri, which officially took place on 28 October 1933, under the direction of Luigi Fausti.

NEWS ARCHIVES

• The history of Ponte Garibaldi | 2 April 2021
• Dante in the Lands of the Duchy | 26 march 2021
• The City’s Remembrance Day | 19 March 2021
• The inauguration of the Vallocchia Urban Aqueduct | 12 March 2021
• Annibale della Genga and Porta San Gregorio | 5 March 2021
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the Festival Of Two Worlds | 26 February 2021
• August 1904. From a congress in Spoleto, the Federazione Nazionale delle Pubbliche Assistenze is born | 19 February 2021
• The Spoleto Carnival in posters from the 19th and 20th centuries, and in photos from the 1930s | 12 February 2021
• The Vocational School of Arts and Crafts | 8 February 2021
• December 1897: the Teatro Caio Melisso hosts the “Cinematograph” | 29 January 2021
• July 1904: first public phone booth in Spoleto | 15 January 2021
• Roman relics in the gardens of Spoleto | 8 January 2021
• Olive oil exhibition in 1930 | 18 December 2020
• The Town Hall in 1913 | 4 December 2020
• 1865: The third leg of the works on the Traversa Interna begins | 27 November 2020
• The birth of the Cotton Mill | 20 November 2020
• Racewalkers at the Giro della Rocca prepare themselves for the London Olympic Games: June, 1948 | 13 November 2020
• Teatro Nuovo: 10-11 September 1864 | 6 November 2020
• Images, August 1948. Teatro Nuovo, Spoleto, second edition of the competition for young opera singers | 30 October 2020
• The 1948 Mille Miglia in Spoleto. That time when Tazio Nuvolari… | 16 October 2020
• Beniamino Gigli in Spoleto in September, 1932 and August,1939 | 9 October 2020
• The Casina dell’Ippocastano | 2 October 2020
• Catalogue of public posters as documents of city chronicles | 25 September 2020
• 27 May 1948. When Gino Bartali crossed the finish line in Spoleto | 18 September 2020
• The Festival Of Two Worlds’ Yearbooks from 1975 to 1979 | 11 September 2020
• The 1967 Festival Of Two Worlds’ Yearbook | 26 August 2020
• The Festival Of Two Worlds’ Yearbooks #2 | 21 August 2020
• The Festival Of Two Worlds’ Yearbooks | 19 August 2020
• 1947-48: Motorcycling in Spoleto | 14 August 2020
• When the Spoleto soccer team’s name was Virtus | 7 August 2020
• Ads and commercials in 1910 Spoleto | 24 July 2020
• The Spoleto City Museum | 17 July 2020
• Restoration works at the Teatro Caio Melisso | 10 July 2020
• Folk feasts’ posters in early XXth-century Spoleto | 3 July 2020
• “Urban VIII on his way to Rome”: or the odd story of the Spoletan Bernini | 26 June 2020
• The ex Spoleto-Norcia Railway: from the first project to its opening | 19 June 2020
• Spoleto Tourist Guidebooks #3 | 12 June 2020
• Christo’s Art at the Festival of Two Worlds | 5 June 2020
• Raffaele Canè – Pictures | 29 May 2020
• Spoleto Tourist Guidebooks #2 | 22 May 2020
• Spoleto Tourist Guidebooks | 15 May 2020
• Pietro Mascagni: the concert at the Teatro Nuovo | 8 May 2020
• The cable car Spoleto-Monteluco | 1 May 2020
• Two days of aviation in Spoleto | 24 April 2020