1437, we are in Florence and Cosimo de’ Medici, called “the Elder” instructs Michelozzo Michelozzi to project what will be the first “public” library of Italy in the convent of San Marco. The Biblioteca Laurenziana will be opened in 1571 and Agnolo Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola will go hunting for volumes for the Magnificent.
The Library of Alessandria was already praised by Petrarca, who wrote about the needs to have public places for consultation. While the Medici family understood this need in less than one century, we have to wait until 1812 for the library of Monaldo Leopardi. If the extreme erudition of the poet Giacomo Leopardi is well known, very few are aware of the fact that Count Monaldo had designed his library to put it at the service of Recanati and even more curious is the story behind those 20,000 volumes that nourished the poet from the Marche.
In 1797 Napoleon begins to ride around the Marche and Monaldo Leopardi gets into debt and is forced to hand over the administration of family finances to his wife, in order to buy books after books from the surrounding convents, threatened by the French looting.
Diletta Diomedi
