A Tour of My Favourite Italian Libraries
Storycraft: Helping You Thrive Through Story - Part 1: The Library Tour Series
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One of the best ways to discover a new place is often through visiting its libraries. This week, I’m briefly hitting pause on the Mini-Series on Lessons from Great Writing, to take a short reading holiday in some of Italy’s best libraries. Come with me to explore a few favourites.
Rome
Biblioteca Angelica
For grandeur and history Biblioteca Angelica, near to Piazza Navona, is hard to beat. One of the first public libraries in Europe, founded back in 1604, its vaulted ceilings, long wooden tables, and its high-arched reading room with shafts of golden light, feel like stepping into the 17th century.
Visit on a Tuesday and you can take part in a guided tour that starts in the Monumental Hall. The Library houses an incredible antique collection with 100,000 volumes, and collections of prints & drawings, or the geographical collection - full of atlases, travel literature and cartographic documents. Globes (terrestrial and celestial) from the 16th/17th centuries complete the collection.
www.BibliotecaAngelica.cultura.gov.it
Biblioteca Casanatense
Think dark wood tones, soft chandeliers, antique shelves, and a dramatic baroque hall lined with 17th century globes. Founded by Dominican friars in 1701 at the behest of Cardinal Casanate, who bequeathed most of his estate to them in order to fund the building of a public library, this is a dark academia dream-setting.
Over 400,000 volumes, and with various study spaces and reading rooms open to the public.
www.casanatense.cultura.gov.it
Venice
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana
Always one of my favourite Italian cities, especially in low season when the crowds thin out.
In Venice it’s impossible not to be impressed by Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. Located in St. Mark’s Square this is a Renaissance masterpiece by Jacopo Sansovino.
Holding priceless Greek and Latin manuscripts, it’s the interior that will floor you: gilded ceilings, Tintoretto and Veronese frescoes — arguably the most beautiful pubic library in Italy. You can visit the Sale Monumentali with a ticket for the Musei di Piazza San Marco.
www.Bibliotecanazionalemarciana.cultura.gov.it
Florence
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana
The birthplace of the humanist library, with the focus on art and learning, the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, commissioned by the Medici, and designed by Michelangelo is known for its terracotta-and-stone reading room, with reading benches, and the famous monumental staircase.
It is also home to early manuscripts by Petrarch and Dante, as well as Tacitus, Pliny, Aeschylus and Sophocles. A full collection of Plato’s Dialogi are housed here too.
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze
This is one of the largest libraries in Italy with a collection of millions of volumes, including rare early prints. Open to researchers and visitors with ID, its impressive facade and the sweeping marble staircases signal what’s to be expected inside. There’s also a creative programme of concerts and events.
If you enjoy libraries in university settings, here are 3 of the best in Italy:
Bologna - Europe’s oldest university has the Archiginnasio Library with its wooden anatomy theatre.
In Padua visit 16th-century halls filled with astronomical manuscripts, see the room from which Galileo taught mathematics, and visit the incredible Anatomical Hall. Don’t miss the frescoes in the aptly-named Sala dei Giganti, and the world’s oldest botanical gardens.
Pavia’s Biblioteca Universitaria, in one of the world’s oldest universities (founded in 1361), with its elegant neoclassical reading rooms, is a good spot for writing (or reading) days.
These are just a few of my favourites. Any Italian libraries you would add? If you had a day to spend writing and reading in any Italian library, which one would you choose?
Italian Reading List
If you’re interested in discovering more about Italian Literature this reading list below will take you from the classics of the medieval and renaissance periods to the present day.
Stage 1: Foundations – Medieval & Renaissance (Classics)
If you’d like to understand Italy’s literary roots, language evolution, and cultural imagination, then start here:
Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy
Focus: Epic poetry, allegory, morality, Italian language foundations.
Read Inferno first; optional annotated editions help with medieval references.
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) – Canzoniere
Focus: Lyric poetry, sonnets, Renaissance humanism, love and introspection.
Giovanni Boccaccio – The Decameron
Focus: Storytelling, social satire, medieval life.
Read a selection of stories if 100 tales feel overwhelming.
Stage 2: 17th–19th Century – Social Change
Explore prose, social change, and the emergence of the modern Italian novel.
Alessandro Manzoni – I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed)
Focus: Historical novel, religion, morality, prose style.
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa – Il Gattopardo (The Leopard)
Focus: Sicilian aristocracy, societal transition, reflective prose.
Observe themes of change, decay, and nostalgia.
Italo Svevo – La Coscienza di Zeno (Zeno’s Conscience)
Focus: Psychological depth, modernist themes, self-analysis.
A bridge to 20th-century introspection and identity literature.
Stage 3: 20th Century – Modernism, War, and Society
Engage with experimental prose, societal critique, and historical reflection.
Luigi Pirandello – Six Characters in Search of an Author
Focus: Identity, reality vs fiction, theatre innovation.
Primo Levi – If This Is a Man (Se questo è un uomo)
Focus: Holocaust memoir, ethics, historical testimony.
Alberto Moravia – Gli Indifferenti (The Time of Indifference)
Focus: Bourgeois life, existential crisis, societal critique.
Cesare Pavese – The Moon and the Bonfires (La luna e i falò)
Focus: Memory, rural life, postwar reflection.
Stage 4: Contemporary Italy – Modern Voices & Popular Literature
See Italy’s culture and society through diverse perspectives. Here are a few of my favourites.
Umberto Eco – The Name of the Rose
Focus: Medieval mystery, philosophy, semiotics, intellectual storytelling.
Italo Calvino – Invisible Cities
Focus: Imaginative prose, cities as reflection, poetic exploration.
Elena Ferrante – Neapolitan Novels
Focus: Friendship, class, urban life, modern female perspective.
Andrea Camilleri – Inspector Montalbano series
Focus: Sicilian life, humor, social observation; light yet insightful.
Niccolò Ammaniti – I’m Not Scared (Io non ho paura)
Focus: Thriller elements, childhood, rural Italy.
Happy reading! Which books from Italian writers would you recommend?
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Until next week,
Laura
Laura McVeigh
Author | Travel Writer | Storyteller
lauramcveigh.com | lauramcveightravel.com | travel-writing.com | greentravelguides.world
Laura McVeigh is a Northern Irish novelist and travel writer. Her internationally bestselling writing has been widely translated. Her latest novel Lenny (described as a ‘remarkable novel’ (BBC) and ‘an essential read’ (Irish Independent)) travels between Libya and Louisiana. She has authored books for Lonely Planet, DK Travel, bylines in Irish Times, Irish Independent and her writing has been featured in BBC, Newsweek, New Internationalist and many more. Former CEO of a global writers’ organisation working with writers from 145 countries, Laura is founder of Travel-Writing.Com and Green Travel Guides. She works with writers, founders, and sustainable brands on storytelling. Laura also writes weekly on writing, travel writing and green travel on Substack.
The Padua one for me is the standout one, Laura- The wood panels all over is a rare treat these days!
What a treasure of a post! I have an Italian passport by marriage, but I’m always trying to catch up on gaps in my cultural knowledge (I’m actually in the middle of Invisible Cities right now). Thanks for the reading list. And also the libraries! Something to look forward to someday, when I don’t spend every trip to Italy on house projects and the future bookshop.