10/12/2014
LA “CROCIERA” DEL COLLEGIO ROMANO
The monumental rooms of the cruise of the Roman College, where currently some funds are placed in the prestigious in Library of Archaeology and History of Art, have a value and a particular interest in the history of libraries and of Italian culture. The Cruise and the adjacent Reading Room are in fact in the architecture, furnishings, decorations, even through transformations and changes of ownership, the persistence in these spaces, which are used for more than four centuries, the concept of "place of the written statement ".
Here indeed was the final seat of the Roman College “Major Bibliotheca” Secreta also known as separate from four other children living in the palace and used for the exclusive use of the Studium founded in 1551 by St. Ignatius of Loyola. The college was as a cultural model the University of Paris and purpose to compensate for the shortage of public schools in Rome and to provide a better training of the clergy. The Palazzo del Collegio Romano was built only after the death of St. Ignatius, between 1582 and 1584, by Pope Gregory XIII Boncompagni. The expansion of the area, formerly owned by the Jesuits, and the final design of the building, attributed to Bartolomeo Ammannati, were then made by the Jesuit Giuseppe Valeriani, , author among other things of the Church of Jesus of Naples and that of Genoa. It was thus to create a large insula in which were placed next to the small church of the Annunciation, the schools, the college , the 5 Libraries, the Kircher Museum , the Pharmacy with the adjoining garden of Simples , for the cultivation of plants herbs . In 1556 was founded the typography also , who went enriching the library of volumes published by the Jesuits.
Forty years after the first stone was laid in 1626 , began the construction of the church of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the architect Orazio Grassi , completed only in 1722 , incorporating the former church and occupying part of the College of Gregorian chant. It was probably changed also the home of the “Bibliotheca Major” and then outlined the final structure of the great hall of the " Cruise " , consisting of a trailing arm , in correspondence of a long corridor , a
result of the closure of the upper gallery of the square courtyard of the
"Schools " , and an arm of which up to now do not know the previous use , but that's probably corrspondeva the first seat of the Bibliotheca Major , created on the forms of the Library of the Escorial in Madrid.
On the barrel vault of this arm is represented by large octagons , a decorative rosettes with cherubs and dragons , taken from the coat of arms of Pope Gregory XIII. On the back wall , in an oval medallion is the fresco of ' " Assumption" , attributed to the school of the Jesuit Andrea Pozzo, who in the eighties of the seventeenth century was operating just inside of Sant ' Ignazio , are likely to be assigned even the woodwork are / eighteenth-century lining the main living room.
In 1875 , with the birth of Rome, the capital , the palace of the Roman College was chosen because of its importance and its position as the seat of the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II , designed and built by Roger Bongos in the short time he was Minister of Education : 1874-1876 . On that occasion, it was built from scratch the " Reading Room ", which runs parallel to the longitudinal arm of the " Cruise " , a reworking of an architectural design by Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola , according to the project Engineer Francesco Bongioannini . There were gathered the huge collections of books, manuscripts and incubaboli monastery libraries of the 60 forfeited by the Italian State . The room, set up initially for consultation only at the bottom , it was later modified by the adaptation of the eighteenth-century wooden shelves of the library of Portuguese father from Ebora Fonseca , from the Franciscan convent of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli , convent then sacrificed to the construction of the Victorian .
In 1984/1985 the architect Nourredine Kadiri assumed , in his doctoral dissertation on the restoration of the Roman College , to give the most appropriate to the Library of Archaeology and History of Art , the restructuring of certain parts occupied by the Ministry of Heritage and Activities cultural and Tourism ( MIBACT ) and the Liceo Visconti. The course project was not realized in 1989, after the transfer of the National Library in new buildings Castro Praetorian and the establishment of the Directorate General of MIBACT at the Collegio
Romano , were assigned to the Library of Archaeology and History of the premises the " Library major" and there were frasferiti its constituent funds , so-called "closed funds " private libraries and special collections of books and of great value , donated in the early 900 ' by collectors , scholars, and bibliophiles great personalities of culture Italian .
Currently the hall of the " Cruise " contains over 100,000 volumes including the Numerical Section which collects most of the collections of the library constituents , namely the Directorate General of Antiquities and Fine Arts and the Ministry of Education , the Fund Ruffo , the Fund Pagliara , the Dusmè gift , unfortunately not preserved in its unity , the Fund Castellani and gift Rossi, important both in terms of volumes and value of issues. There are also collections collections donated by archaeologists, historians of art or architecture as the Ricci, the Giglioli, the Monneret de Villard, Rusconi, the unique collection of catalogs of art galleries belonged to the past and Marcello Venturoli in order of time the Gift Belli Barsali and the districts. Finally note that the Fund Vessella collects a large number of printed music and connects it to the Chamber and the Chamber Music Theatre. Lately they have been added to the chronic lack of space in the main office of the Palazzo Venezia, the prestigious collection of sale catalogs of the major auction houses nineteenth century to the present, the section of numismatics, ancient history and geography.
