Biblioteca Planettiana

Behind the Renaissance windows of Palazzo della Signoria works a public library of about 170,000 items: printed books, manuscripts, incunabula, prints, drawings and photographs. Founded in 1859 from a noble donation and enlarged by the Pianetti family's library and archive, it remains a working reading room where Jesi keeps its written memory.

Why it matters

A city of this size rarely holds a library of regional rank, and the tourism portal describes the Planettiana as one of the most important in the Marche. Its value lies in the stratification of its funds: a founder's collection given in 1859, the aristocratic Pianetti library and archive added in the early twentieth century, and continuing acquisitions as the civic library of Jesi. The Sale Fondi Antichi, or ancient-funds rooms, preserve fifteenth-century interiors and display old books alongside two large globes, celestial and terrestrial, made at the end of the seventeenth century.

What to notice

The library's public rooms lie beyond the Renaissance portal of Palazzo della Signoria. The reading room retains the atmosphere of a working library. The ancient-funds collection includes the Pianetti fund, with some 15,000 volumes, manuscripts and early printed books that arrived with later bequests. The pairing of the two late-seventeenth-century globes in the quattrocento rooms preserves an example of a noble library's scientific apparatus. The library has also hosted book exhibitions and reading-group events, including a poetry festival and a children's-literature reading circle.

Context and history

The library was created in 1859 thanks to the donation of his carefully chosen library by Marquis Angelo Ghislieri. Its present name commemorates the book and archive fund that the Pianetti family handed to the Comune in the opening years of the twentieth century, joined to the civic collections in the same palace where the city had kept its archaeological finds from 1867. Today's holdings of roughly 170,000 items span printed volumes, manuscripts, incunabula, engravings, drawings and photographs. The library participates in Jesi's Urban Museum Network, alongside civic museums and theatre collections.