Biblioteca Rilliana

Poppi’s Rilliana Library occupies the first floor of Castello dei Conti Guidi, in former offices of the Florentine vicars. Its collection includes about 25,000 volumes, among them medieval manuscripts and roughly a thousand incunabula.

Why it matters

In 1825 Count Fabrizio Rilli Orsini left his family library to the commune of Poppi: nine thousand volumes and two hundred manuscripts, along with the three rooms that held them. The collection grew through later gifts and the addition of the Camaldoli hermitage library after the suppression of religious houses. It now spans works from the twelfth through the nineteenth century.

What to notice

The library occupies rooms where the castle’s Florentine vicars administered the valley. They retained that function until 1914, when they were permanently assigned to the library. The collection includes manuscript codices and early printed books. A historic archive of about 5,500 documents from the fourteenth century onward, owned by the Comune di Poppi, is also partly conserved here.

Context and history

“Rilliana” takes its name from Fabrizio Rilli Orsini, whose 1825 gift established the library’s original collection. The Camaldoli hermitage library later joined it, followed by bequests from Poppi families. Today the library preserves both its historic holdings and a consultation collection for scholars.