Biblioteca Civica Romolo Spezioli

The Biblioteca Civica Romolo Spezioli is one of Fermo's major cultural institutions. Founded in 1688, it holds manuscripts, early printed books, drawings and engravings in the Palazzo degli Studi, whose historic Sala del Mappamondo preserves the library's original furnishings.

Why it matters

Cardinal Decio Azzolino founded the library in 1688. Its collections grew through the bequest of Romolo Spezioli, a physician from Fermo who served Queen Christina of Sweden and left the library his books. The holdings include about three thousand manuscripts, 681 incunabula, hundreds of thousands of documents and a substantial collection of prints and drawings, making the institution notable for the history of medicine and of the book.

What to notice

The Sala del Mappamondo, the library's original core, retains walnut shelving and a fir-wood ceiling. Its name comes from a terrestrial globe made of wood and Fabriano paper by geographer Silvestro Amanzio Moroncelli and placed there in 1713. The library also preserves the funeral mask of Giacomo Leopardi. The print and drawing cabinet includes sixteenth-century drawings by Giovanni Antonio Dosio, works by Domenico Piola and Baciccio, engravings after Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, and graphic works by Federico Barocci and the Carracci. The collection also includes a tenth-century parchment codex on rhetoric and the 1493 first printed edition of Columbus's letter announcing the discovery of America.

Context and history

Azzolino installed the library in a hall of Palazzo dei Priori, furnished with walnut shelving that survives in the Sala del Mappamondo. After Azzolino's death, Spezioli's bequest gave the institution its name and strengthened its holdings in medical history. Later donations included the De Minicis archaeological library, Giovanni Battista Carducci's graphic collection and more than a thousand drawings by Fortunato Duranti. The library later moved to the adjacent Palazzo degli Studi, designed by Girolamo Rainaldi. The building had housed the university founded by Sixtus V in 1585 until 1826; busts of popes associated with the university remain on its façade.