Description
The Biblioteca Forteguerriana is Pistoia's historic library, on Piazza della Sapienza: it grew out of the school founded in 1473 thanks to a bequest from Cardinal Niccolò Forteguerri, and it holds more than a thousand manuscripts and 126 incunabula in a 16th-century palace with a Renaissance loggia.
The Palazzo della Sapienza was designed in 1530 by the Florentine architect Nanni Unghero. Under the loggia a plaque remembers Giosuè Carducci, who taught at the high school housed here until 1923. Among the collections, the Ferdinando Martini collection stands out, with almost all of Italian and French theater in fine editions and precious Oriental manuscripts.
Its first core is traced back to the books that the canon Sozomeno left to the city for public use, in the 15th century. The collections were opened to the public in 1696, by order of the Grand Duke.
Today it keeps about 300,000 volumes, 3,000 16th-century books and 2,000 prints, and it receives a copy of every book published in the province of Pistoia.
The Palazzo della Sapienza was designed in 1530 by the Florentine architect Nanni Unghero. Under the loggia a plaque remembers Giosuè Carducci, who taught at the high school housed here until 1923. Among the collections, the Ferdinando Martini collection stands out, with almost all of Italian and French theater in fine editions and precious Oriental manuscripts.
Its first core is traced back to the books that the canon Sozomeno left to the city for public use, in the 15th century. The collections were opened to the public in 1696, by order of the Grand Duke.
Today it keeps about 300,000 volumes, 3,000 16th-century books and 2,000 prints, and it receives a copy of every book published in the province of Pistoia.