Stabilimento Tipografico Pliniana

The Stabilimento Tipografico Pliniana is a printing house founded at Selci-Lama in 1913. Its historic composition and printing machinery remains alongside the company's continuing work, preserving a record of the upper Tiber valley's printing industry.

Why it matters

Founded by don Ruggero Fiordelli and don Enrico Giovagnoli as the Società Anonima Cooperativa Tipografica Pliniana, the firm later took the name Stabilimento Tipografico Pliniana in 1943. It has produced more than 2,000 titles, including work for scholarly and cultural institutions. As photocomposition displaced lead typesetting in the late twentieth century, the machinery was retained, leaving a working industrial collection in its original setting.

What to notice

The collection occupies the former limonaia of Villa Croci. Its equipment includes a Monotype keyboard and caster, a Linotype, typographic and platen presses, a proof press, and machines for perforating, cutting and folding. Lead type is preserved in cases used for Greek, Lithuanian and Cyrillic composition, alongside mathematical and chemical signs and zinc printing plates. Together, the machines and materials show how type was cast, assembled and printed.

Context and history

The cooperative began as a branch of Città di Castello's Leonardo typography and developed into an independent printing house. Its equipment traces successive stages of printing, from hand-set lead and mechanical composition to offset and digital production. The enterprise is part of the industrial history of San Giustino and the wider upper Tiber valley, a region with longstanding graphic and publishing traditions.