Biblioteca Salaborsa

Salaborsa occupies an iron-and-glass hall within Palazzo d'Accursio, once a stock exchange and later a sports arena. A glass floor reveals Roman remains, medieval foundations and the buried garden of a Renaissance naturalist.

Why it matters

The iron-and-glass hall reflects Bologna's industrial confidence in the 1880s, when entrepreneurs built a trading pavilion here between 1883 and 1886, partly modelled on Paris. Beneath its transparent floor, excavated remains trace nearly three thousand years, from Villanovan settlement through Etruscan Felsina to the Roman colony founded in 189 BC.

What to notice

Beneath the glass floor are walls of the civil basilica of Bononia, built between the late second and early first centuries BC, a fourteenth-century brick well and foundations of medieval houses near Palazzo d'Accursio. The remains of Ulisse Aldrovandi's sixteenth-century botanical garden, laid out in 1568, also survive. Above them, the iron structure and glass roof belong to the exchange building built from 1883 to 1886 by firms Cottrau and Boubée. Stock trading declined by 1903, and the hall reopened in a new form in 1926. After the Second World War it served as a sports hall for basketball and boxing. The Torrione beside the hall has housed the Teatro Stabile dei Burattini since 1976.

Context and history

Palazzo d'Accursio developed as the seat of Bologna's Comune from around 1245, passing through papal, Bentivoglio and papal-legate phases. The walled garden on its north side, acquired by papal vicars in 1360, became the site of the later exchange hall. A 1999 urban project turned the area toward cultural use, and Salaborsa opened in December 2001 with architecture that exposes the site's layers of construction. Its name preserves the trading-hall phase, while the excavated remains beneath it record earlier history.